The Geese Going Over

In the village store someone says,
"I heard the geese go over,"
and there is a moment of silence.
Why this is so moving, I do not know.
But all of us feel it.

~ Gladys Taber ~

A flock of birds appeared in the sky. They flew high above us with no seeming sense of direction, whirling aimlessly as snow. Once the whole flock tumbled toward us, then suddenly swirled and soared into a V formation, rising upward and out of sight. They swooped right out of the sky. How did they know, I marveled, when to stop falling earthward and soar upward? How did the word get to each one when to turn, when to glide, when to flap a wing? How was it that not one of them ever bumped into the other? Where they came from and where they went I could not tell.

from I, Keturah (235)
by Ruth Wolff

~ Click for more autumnal imagery from I, Keturah ~

Thanks Nataliya!

Vocabcident

Uh Oh! Are Cathleen & Ben
on the verge of a snaccident?

This term is a recent addition to my vocabulary,
introduced to me by Ben when he was recovering
from jetlag and sent me the following text:

"Oops, had a napcident and just slept for five hours."

Apparently, one can have not just accidents
but any number of -cidents!
E.g., Impulse Buy = Shopcident!
In the course of writing a lot and typing too quickly, I commit numerous typos, resulting in vocabcidents. For example, I accidentally typed "Sortry" when apologizing to my brother Aaron for clogging up his email with some duplicate messages (a dupliccident?).

In response to my apology, Aaron emailed back:
"Sortry" . . . Does that mean you're sorta sorry??? LOL!!!

*****************

Another time, instead of typing signification,
I accidentally omitted the "a," thus yielding significtion.
I was on the verge of correcting my voccabcident but had second thoughts. After all, signi - fiction sounds like an important genre of fiction that we need more of! My friend Len -- artist, poet, and professor -- responded that I should leave it as is, on the basis that "We always need more words!"

So Significtion it is!