Connotation and Denotation met as cousins by the water
To discuss merits and philosophy, not initially a question of beauty.
On the allure of a proper name,
Poseidon, Persephone or Howard,
The grim feature,
As the sun to night, erases all features but shadow.
Absence brings about a pail, filled once for each stall,
Each of us a micron, a millimeter closer to our time,
Put off by hunger and anxious to start the day
In the field by the prisoners and the concrete and the highway.

It is high enough for us to aspire and name and in forgetting,
To come home wet as rain to begin making sense
Like a quilt of mathematical symbols and simplicity
To keep us warm and ample with each other
For the next feeding tomorrow.

Not simple enough,
Borax, Calgon, ammonia and the recipe in Cyrillic,
Albatross of war,
Emblematic of nowhere
Forever smashing faces.

She brought out the cool pan of water,
The lotus still afloat in her garden of make believe,
Deep in the jungle inside each of us, a lyre, a trident,
The ship of fools moored in the harbor shelling.
The distance in perspective from a satellite is extraordinary.
Raveled up wool and colored yarns of the people’s fields.
We gave over soon enough to the cross roads of day.
We showered our muck boots with the hose in the front yard.
She gave me ten pieces of silver
Round as fake ingots, still in their plastic.

Tell me she heard and listen I whispered
To herself arisen as mist of eyelash above the forest of Ecuador
Tucked into the lap of her Andes,
Eternal even as worn, like the elbows of old dresses,
The fray of skin and return of grass
To where we first buried innocence
After the horror.

Horror no more,
Soft lip of our whispers.
Warm smell of our breakfast.
Timing the naming is everything
And for this world and its million priors and those to come,
Call her gently,
Knowing what has already come,
Unknown, unnamed and still waiting,
Perfectly still and waiting.

By Rolf Stavig
12/5/2022