Naming

Hello Dear Ones! Every once in a while, I am reminded of the unique power of naming things, or pets, or people. I have been noticing how naming can, sometimes, contract and erase and deny. Today’s draft grew from these reflections.

And, please take a moment to read to the end, where I ask you for a little help on a future project.

It’s odd, isn’t it, he said,

Everything around here is “river-something”, or “woods-whatever,”

all these nature names.

He says this standing at the hotel window,

one handing holding back the blackout curtain

while unclouded light heats up the asphalt parking lot.

It’s like at home, I say,

where they named all the parks for the people who were displaced to build the parks.

Displaced. And worse.

We name our places after what we destroyed to build the places.

He pulls me close, into the pool of morning sun,

we squint in the light reflected from the gray metal roof.

We rest in quiet,

floating in the realness of the never-named.

Little Help?

I’m in the process of gathering some drafts to revise for a possible future project. The working theme in my head is “love poems.” I mean “love” in its widest possible sense: romantic love (of course), love of nature, love as action, etc.

I am asking you to suggest to me a draft to revise and include in this little project. What spoke to you? Which of these drafts was, to you, clearly a love poem?

Thank you.