Innominable

All these names flow through this strange
And changing vortex, tumbling

Spinning and distorting them
Like waves rushing through the weeds

That trail from some obstruction.
Call it a life, a person.

Call it a brain or a mind.
Call it fouled society.

You wouldn’t be wrong, wouldn’t
Be any closer to right.

This sort of unloosed pattern
Could, for some, mean poetry,

But of the kind often found
Where poems are born like humans

In populations rampant
With infant mortality.

Why risk a ceremony
To name an ill-starred offspring?

Let it cry. Let’s wait for it
To survive a while, weak thing,

Prove it can be one of us.
Prove it can cry its own name.