Love crunchy words
Like lettuce and barnacle, zeitgeist and itch
Ribosome, applecore, pumpkin and kitsch
love prickly words
Like porcupine, happenstance, Guernsey and gable
Penultimate, burlap, corbel and sable
embrace secret words
Like whimsy, whippoorwill, tingle or trundle
Elfin, apprentice, bipedal and bundle
gather
a dirndl, fleur-de-lis, damsel-fly brogue
a tapestry, sacristy, elegant rogue
Hopscotch from
Marble, mosaic, to hardwood parquet
To bamboo and walnut and opal inlay
inhale
The orchid, the absinthe, the redolent fir
Of sandalwood, ambergris sassafras-myrrh
leaping from
pebble to cobble, in babbling brook
Dappled and rippled, sparkling Chinook
And settle in fairy-ring, cavern or nook
Nestle with leather-bound, intricate book
Leery of
Harlequin, parlor trick, flimflam, bamboozle
balderdash, blarney, malarkey, perusal
Silver tongued, bleary-eyed, black-hearted devil
looking-glass, filigree, facet and bevel
hearken the
kettledrum, glockenspiel, conga and lute
dulcimer, carrolan, djembe and flute
Raven, the dragon, the angel’s disease
the harbinger carbuncle odious wheeze
Spy
Kingdom and phylum and prehensile paws
Talons and velvet and saber-toothed maws
Shibboleth, trebuchet, ocelot stalk
Brachiate, undulate, gargoyle and auk
A lexical, textural story to tell
an endless and infinite, bottomless well