It could be the name of a prehistoric beast <br />that roamed the Paleozoic earth, rising up <br />on its hind legs to show off its large vocabulary, <br />or some lover in a myth who is metamorphosed into a book. <br /> <br />It means treasury, but it is just a place <br />where words congregate with their relatives, <br />a big park where hundreds of family reunions <br />are always being held, <br />house, home, abode, dwelling, lodgings, and digs, <br />all sharing the same picnic basket and thermos; <br />hairy, hirsute, woolly, furry, fleecy, and shaggy <br />all running a sack race or throwing horseshoes, <br />inert, static, motionless, fixed and immobile <br />standing and kneeling in rows for a group photograph. <br /> <br />Here father is next to sire and brother close <br />to sibling, separated only by fine shades of meaning. <br />And every group has its odd cousin, the one <br />who traveled the farthest to be here: <br />astereognosis, polydipsia, or some eleven <br />syllable, unpronounceable substitute for the word tool. <br />Even their own relatives have to squint at their name tags. <br /> <br />I can see my own copy up on a high shelf. <br />I rarely open it, because I know there is no <br />such thing as a synonym and because I get nervous <br />around people who always assemble with their own kind, <br />forming clubs and nailing signs to closed front doors <br />while others huddle alone in the dark streets. <br /> <br />I would rather see words out on their own, away <br />from their families and the warehouse of Roget, <br />wandering the world where they sometimes fall <br />in love with a completely different word. <br />Surely, you have seen pairs of them standing forever <br />next to each other on the same line inside a poem, <br />a small chapel where weddings like these, <br />between perfect strangers, can take place.<br /><br />Billy Collins<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/thesaurus/
