The word jargon originally meant:
birdsong. As in: this morning the
backyard oaks were full of jargon.
And the clementine orange
was named after a French monk.
And I wonder: how did the
word for orange become
associated with lovers, and I learn,
after a little digging,
that the famous song is about
a specific woman, named after
the orange, perhaps, or after
the monk, who, regardless,
drowns in a river–and the jargon
then becomes a lyric mourning
the death of said dead Clementine.
Women are not oranges, I say,
and death is no buzzword
that obscures its meaning
in groves of oak.
Death is not an abbreviation
or an acronym, although,
especially of late, it has
been known to sing.
michael jarmer 