This week for Wicked Wednesday, the prompt is ‘Bond’ after the quartet of the same name playing ‘Victory’ from the year 2000. I have that album Born on CD. Likely I purchased it because it featured four women in tight dresses with lovely bums. I do enjoy their music as well, to be fair. The other Bond, James Bond, uses sex and sizzle too; although I’d like to see a Jane Bond at some point.

The origin of bond, is rather interesting. The ultimate root source is bind: ORIGIN Old English bindan, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch and German binden, from an Indo-European root shared by Sanskrit bandh.

This changed to band, as in: #4 archaic ‘a thing that restrains, binds, or unites.’ ORIGIN late Old English (sense 4 of the noun), from Old Norse, reinforced in late Middle English by Old French bande, of Germanic origin; related to bind.

In turn, this lead to bonds: physical restraints used to hold someone or something prisoner, esp. ropes or chains. ORIGIN Middle English: variant of band1.

The surname Bond, comes from Old English bonda, bunda, reinforced by Old Norse bóndi, which in the Old Norse meant farmer or husbandman, as well as a personal name.

In Modern English, bond is also used in chemistry, the law, building and financial trades and in terms of relationships. It’s interesting that the word bondage, originally comes from an agricultural background: ORIGIN Middle English: from Anglo-Latin bondagium, from Middle English bond ‘serf’ (earlier ‘peasant, householder’), from Old Norse bóndi ‘tiller of the soil,’ based on búa ‘dwell’; influenced in sense by bond.
The BDSM meaning of bondage was first recorded in 1966.

the fertile soil of my phobia ridden mind
yields a paltry harvest of habitual faults
with plow and mattock blistered hands seek
redemption for numerous errors in judgement

the sun cannot scorch hotter than the whips
that keep me entangled in familial bondage

there was a time when I ran naked through
open fields of imagination and possibility
when the bond of life had yet to be cashed
and bitterness sank to the bottom of the mug

the toasts and songs mean nothing to me now
that she has traveled where I am yet to go

I realize this is not very wicked this week, but when the Muse wants a gloomy poem… I can but obey.