basket wordweaving

.

a nest is a basket of birdies;

a basket for peaches changed histories;

and ella sang in the late thirties

of tiskets and taskets and mysteries.

.

containers of stiff-fibered lattices

hold picnics or handhelds or bread,

while catholic uniforms plaid a sis

who basketless may go unfed.

.

the slangness of basket weaves parity

with genitals, bowlsmoke and bastards,

a versatile twisting of clarity

and provenance dim-distant-pastwards.

.

“so silly”–oh, really? believing

that wordplay and mindflex may yield

new pathways to language beweaving

new verbiage is this poet’s shield.

.

so gather your own stalky fibers

and weave–it is not a big ask,

you may become language macgyvers

and in your own basketing bask.

.

Notes: The early game of Basketball involved a peach basket. Ella Fitzgerald recorded “A-Tisket A-Tasket” in 1938, overriding the objections of her record label, and her career skyrocketed. Baskets come in many different custom, function-related designs. The Urban Dictionary has five pages’ worth of words and phrases involving variations of “basket.” “MacGyver” was a TV series whose main character was famous for improvising solutions to dire situations with unusual materials at hand. And Catholic uniforms got dragged in by the heels simply because of a need for a rhyme with “lattices.”