Dreamdays--and other Compound Flopflips

My grandson, on his walk yesterday, suddenly commented that he liked the "woodcottons".
Hmmm. Well it does take some learning to know which word of a compound word should appear first. Is cotton or wood the most important contribution to that tree name?

It started me thinking about compound words, and I decided to write a story misusing, transposing, if you will, several common compound words. There are thirteen.

(In honor of Thursday Thirteen)

See if you can spot them.


I was just a little snipe gutter, high knee to a hopper grass, when I escaped the crossing streets and found myself out in the glorious side country. There were fly butters out there, in the breeze, and on the ground by the grass crabs under the pigeon stools, I found a treasure of fish silvers and worm rings. The trees were alive with sucker saps, and between their roots were colorful stool toads. I heard a noise...a buzzing...ah... it was just a bunch of bug hums!

That was fun. I think I'll try a poem.
(Thirteen switched compounds again)

Back fiddles and will whippoors
give me bump geese
Space crawls and snake rattles terrify.
Give me a bird song or a box of plum sugars,
flake snows or bow rains through a light sky,
A dragon snap colored in cool marine aqua
or a proud, white lily water. Sigh.