By Nolo Segundo
English is not a language
One can ever get ahead of—
Just too darn many words!
Like ‘ludic’ for example:
Playful, in the sense of
Spontaneous, without a
Real purpose. Sooo…
How come I never came
Across it in over sixty,
Yes, sixty years reading
Untold millions of words in
My beloved mother tongue,
The language I love,
The language I married.
Even spell-check never saw it,
Or else why would it underline
Little Ludic in red, like some sort
Of criminal who needs a good
Sorting out, a spell in scary
Word prison perhaps?
But if you try, really try,
You can find sweet Ludic
Laying low, hiding quietly in the
Big fat Oxford Dictionary, lord
And regent of all word books.
He lives there with his cousins:
Ludibrious and that stuffed shirt,
Ludibry, and Ludicro (no doubt
From the Italian side of the
Family) and, of course, the far
More famous Ludicrous who
Seems to want all the spotlight
For himself…words can be
So very selfish too.