Names

There’s a bird

that’s between mourning

dove and whippoorwill, that lives in

those dusty streets I ran.  And

those streets are the other side of Earth

from here.

But here’s the thing:

I don’t know names. To name it

fails to capture what is.  Running down streets bare

feet with fields, firewood burning dust and ashes

falling sunlight filtered red and rosy cheeked.

The haunting calls.

Despite it all I named love.  I named it

to know it and to call it

capture forgets who chose the ring

around

my heart

to keep

the pieces as one

But then what is your name? 

And I don’t want to call it.  Words dance

in a circle of games and eyes and

never speaking the pockets full of

things we know.  Looks to filter

light and laughter and other ways

we are.  If.

And I left that haunt of the bird and I

left the sun and ashes in the dust

and I know it was so long ago but

when we parted the dust

never settled. 

I heard it again today,

here.  The call.

That bird.