lively salent

lively salent

oh, Miss Asedgtables!

I do candidly swear that

if you, indeed, were

crackerjack with vegetables

and took your proper turn

at wild-plant edibles,

you’d show impressive talent

for Macon lively salent

(Author’s note:

In the spirit of holy nonsense

(and of hallowed fun), the kind

I love so dearly, I took here

the liberty of fabricating salent,

whom I claim as a real word

(since, after all, I did! make her up!)

Which term of course rhymes

(and that quite cozily) with talent—

a handy dictionaried word that just so happens,

her own smiling aspect so warmly in my face,

to dovetail with salent.

Beheld inversely—as I’ve already implied,

I think—salent accords with talent.

Or vice versa ad infinitum, et cetera,

and so forth.

I might have employed salad (or even salep)

instead. But she didn’t rhyme with talent

nearly as well—so naturally why would I?

To sum it up, I didn’t. Didn’t pick salad, I mean.)