Sometimes you can do some wonderful things with wordplay, even when said wordplay is deadly serious.
Take the word foreshadow. It is a literary term, yes, but watch what happens when an accomplished poet (in this case, Matt Rasmussen) plays with the word “shadow” lying inside the confines of the word “foreshadow.”
Interesting things, that’s what. The type things that get a reader / writer saying, “Why didn’t I think of that?” Of course, the answer is always the same: “Because someone else did first!”
But it’s good to know that there are plenty of other words waiting to be played with in interesting ways. Flip open that dusty dictionary in your study and take it from there.
Elegy in X Parts (My foreshadow stretches)
Matt Rasmussen
X.
My foreshadow stretches
out in front of me.
We stand on the soles
of each other’s feet.
I am a field
and there’s a man
standing in the middle
of me saying,
God is the sky pinning
me to my body.
I am a man
and there is a field
under me saying,
A dead man makes
love to the earth
by just lying there.