Best Left without a Name

Forgive me, Nova Scotia,
but I don’t yet know
the names of your flowers, birds, and trees.

I am still a child,
wide-eyed,
with mouth open
to catch the rain,
hair loose and wild,
giggling when it becomes tangled
by the wind.

I pass dark purple stalks
on the side of the road.
Lupines, someone told me,
but I know them as the rush of a new love,
bursting with exuberance,
shouting to all the world,
Here I am! Take notice!

When I slow my pace,
I spy tiny indigo blooms
floating above creekside ferns.
Please don’t tell me who they are.
I already know:
the nuanced underworld
of a love that is quiet in public
but seething in some locked, secret chamber
for which only two hold the key.

At night I lie face up in my cabin.
Hand held before me,
I cannot see it in the dark.
Instead, I take in the strange sounds
of some winged creature in the woods.
Here is the cry of a love gone feral,
cut loose from chains of man and woman,
what they must do,
what they may not.

On afternoons when the sun is bright,
I watch a million leaves quiver
like a lover-to-be,
trembling should I stand near.

At such moments, I feel the world embrace me,
the whole of nature my consort, my intimate.
It’s then my mind goes blank,
and names of even common objects
—rock, water, sky—
fall away.
I am in that blessed state
of no-time-no-thought
that once I knew so well,
entrained,
entwined,
deliciously spent.

But don’t ever think
I’ve given up on men.
I am forever the optimist.
Doubtless, somewhere on this continent
is a single man unafraid of making love.
Surely, some day he will appear
on my doorstep,
wildflowers in hand.
And if we are both very lucky,
he will bring me a bouquet
neither of us has need to name.

Wrights Lake, Nova Scotia
June 23, 2007