BEFORE WE HAD WORDS TO NAME FLOWERS

Exploring the limitations of light in a shining city on a hill.

This (recently completed) draft is the final poem to a book I have been working on since 2009. The poetry book is a reflection on my experiences of a half-century navigating professional and personal life in American culture as a GENX, neurodiverse, queer person from Appalachia.

— — — — —

I feel myself (again) transforming
Beyond the survival of cat scratch ferocity
Water and wind soothe the hardness of me
Unsteady, my mouth tries to sing

Within this shaky song
I feel the shape of forgotten music
(salvation notes on my tongue)

I recognize this music from a long ago journey.
A harmonized melody.
Music only found in flowers
that choose to open through
crucible and stardust.

No longer scared of my skin
I begin opening myself too

I sense gentleness finding it’s way to me.
I remember this thing
This thing coming toward me
I remember it as beauty

Beauty from a whispered universe
that calls the uncomplicated sophistication of flowers
home.

On hot tin and mendacity
That feral sky drifts further away

Through roots and mud,
Things long-shadowed
Things shackled to limitation
Transform into cool, wet seeds
Turning through hot scorched earth

(Reaching upward
they begin shaping
their own light.)

Pressing through sacred toes
further into earth,
a curiosity synchronizes
memory and desire.

My only intention now
Is tending to this wild, limitless garden
(of who I am)

Reclaiming those parts
(that have always been within me)
… before I followed others
who wanted me to believe
that we had words
to name flowers.