OED, v.: 31. Followed by into or to, indicating the result of a change. a. (a) transitive. To cause (a person or thing) to become something else; to change, transform, or convert into something. 

Before this conversion we have to turn  
one’s body; turn foes against one another; turn  
a sentence toward a different cast; turn an instrument  
so precisely now for shaping. We must turn  
as the door turn upon hinges. We must turn thee  
hither, turn thee. We must turn for rest, trying 
each corner of my Bed, / To find if Sleep were there, but Sleep  
was lost. Before changing into, we must twist (an ankle) out  
of position (esp. by landing awkwardly); we must wrench, or  
we must sprain. We must first acknowledge that turning or 
peeling mushrooms is an art that practice alone can attain. 

We must turn about, and we must play. 

Why must progression start first with so much  
practice? Why must practice acknowledge before  
its process so much grief? A clumsy knocking against  
glass, music turned down soft? (Bed turned down; these rocks,  
by custom, turn to beds of down. A bed turned down.) 

What is that which I should turn to? Every door is barr’d 
with gold, and opens but to golden keys. 

This poem started off, once, as birds.

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Prompt

Write a poem using as many senses of one word as you can.

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Emily Kramer is an editor and miscellany living in Boston. She received her B.A. in English from Barnard College where she studied with Saskia Hamilton, and her PhD at Boston University’s Editorial Institute, where she created a critical edition of the poems of Arthur Hallam, forthcoming from Oxford University Press.