Ezekiel's Tears

[ChristopherSea]

Oy. This is getting bogged down. But, (1) I have read cactus as the plural of cactus, and as a native Texan, it's the standard plural for the folks I know, (2) cacti is a latinization of a non-latin word, so the OED ain't perfect either, (3) it's fine to say MW sucks, but they're not pulling the usage out of their butts, and (4) the whole point of using the plural is that it's weird. It parallels bluefly, bats/fall/spread . . . All of the nested lists are designed . . .

Nm. I took the bait here, instead of taking the edit. Thanks for the note, and I'll look for a write-around. I stopped posting in serious bc I was getting comments like this one--condescending, rude, and not engaged with the content of the poem. Since I'm posting in mild critique, here, I'd appreciate a refrain from comments like "it is surprising you believed it" which is neither mild nor a critique.

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Fwiw--Cacti vs. cactuses
. . . Also, like many names of plants, the uninflected cactus is sometimes treated as plural.

http://grammarist.com/usage/cacti-cactuses/

Crow,

It's a beautiful desert-scape. I could paint this one in watercolors. Cacti reads as well as cactus for me. I may have more of an issue the intervening sun between the Cacti descriptions. Would something on the order on this read as well:

As the sun overtops the crags,
cactus, white as bone with teardrop pads,
grip the stone
and bloom red, waxy, smelling graceless,
rancid, mean.

Not a re-write, just an example. See what you think. I was not aware of this cactus species. I love the succulents. Thanks for sharing it./Chris