Lake Effect

The thing with available puns
In a language, even macaronic ones,
Is how they dam up meanings closer.

It always seems strange, when learning
Another tongue, to discover one sound
Can mean wholly incompatible things,

But in your own language, not only
Do you not think twice about flies
And flies, much less waits and weights,

But you’ve pooled their disparate senses
In one lake in your mind. They’re together
In your language only, or again,

Sometimes as a braided convergence
Of a native and an outsider punning,
Which says something about clouds

Of thought, the way words with meanings
Associate, evaporate, but you’re damned
If you can understand their gathering.