according to some linguists, lest we take
for granted forsook will linger
past forsake—just wait

until wed becomes wedded, creep evolves  
from crept to creeped, a process already underway—
 
a reminder evolution lurks in language:
what we speak is not what we spoke
nor what will be spoken  
 
if we correct what doesn’t agree.
The agreement itself may change,
 
so why mourn the dangling participle,
the inevitable passing of the irregulars?
 
One day we’ll fail to recognize
our very forms. Use it or lose it, experts say
 
of speech, but what part of the participle is dangling,
I ask ChatGPT, which says it’s the one left
without a proper subject,
bereft
 
the way I feel when I forget
the names of birds who trilled outside
my houses, year after year: Northern perula, robin—
 
I hear them now, singing how
my slit heart slitted when they left,
 
how at the end, my lungs, a bellows, billowed
all my notes, compressed, as I pleaded—
no, I pled, my requiem  
 
for the future of the past tense,
all of the ear I’ve lost.