We Are The Word

All the townsfolk here
look like words.  
On Sundays
in the park, it’s a novel;
late nights
bring out taut verses,
and at noon time
Main Street
is a run-on sentence.

My friend John
looks exactly like
the word
“egret” —

not like
the bird but like 
the name of the bird:
he’s short and similar
to “regret” but not quite
that, though

John often pouts that
he’d rather be “buffalo”
or “wolf.”  Even “python”
would be preferable, he says.

I say, ” Hey c’mon, John,
you’re elegant, a flyer,
a perfect and delightful cool startle
from the river’s edge
when we pass.”

“Easy for you to say,
‘ghost,’ ”
is his retort.
 
I fade before that.
Incorporeality
is no match in the moment
for a wounded
male ego, though I know
in the long run,
I will win.  Right now, though,
I’ll let the machismo slide.
We live in a dictionary,
we didn’t write the definitions,
and we’re each of us a little hot
under the syllable —
it’s not even clear to many of us
that we were born
to speak this tongue.