Wordbirds, 46

We’ve commenced our journey backward through Webster’s 3rd. I’m picking a word near the end of each entry for each letter—a word that interests me for some reason or a word I’d not ever known before—and surrounding it with a frayed coat of doggerel.

Words that flew into my life from Webster’s 3rd …

gyve v.

to bind or restrain with fetters

Miss Emily*—such heart! such brain!—

Said we will handle with a chain

Those people who will never deign

To be just like the rest of us.

She’s right: You make much of a fuss

And here they come with blunderbuss

(And chain). Then they’ll conspire to gyve—

To bind—you long as you’re alive.

They’ll also labor to deprive

You of your rights and liberty—

And soon the very sound of “free”

Will be as weird as a Tumtum tree.**

* link to Emily Dickinson poem "Much madness is divinist sense"

** link to Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky"