Fort

Ah, here we go again:

the bleedin’, blindingly, bloody obvious

etymology of a word

falling out of its invisible box,

revealing itself shamelessly

without so much as an OED.

‘Ta-da! What took you so long, by the way?’

it laughs, good-naturedly,

while I resort to the slapping of a forehead (mine),

astonished at my

s  l  o  w  n  e  s  s.

I question the audacity of calling myself ‘poet’.

Pnnfff! Poet?

Do you even know what that means?

(Checks Dictionary of Etymology;

reframes answer as, ‘Yes’;

inwardly adds, ‘At least, I do now.’)

‘Le Chateau Fort,’ Gemma said,

leafing through a tourist leaflet.

(Can you leaf through a leaflet?

Perhaps I’d better check.)

‘The strong Chateau.’

‘Like a fort,’ I add,

looking around to see if there’s an Alleluia chorus

to mark the before/after border

between linguistic darkness and light.

Fort. Strong. Of course!

Forte. Fortissimo. Fortitude.

Fortress (now considering if this is a female fort).

How could fort’s true meaning

have stayed hidden for so long?

And every time this happens, I wonder:

how many more times?;

how many more words?

Words are stones, I think, getting all poety again,

and sometimes we need an OED

to crack them open; to reveal their hidden fossils.

Other times, there the fossils are, for everyone to see:

as obvious as a strong on top of a hill.