When you know someone truly
You stop using their name.

I call my someone
beloved, brilliant, beautiful.
Because that’s who she is.

Is the Cypress improved by his title?
Does the mighty Oak know her name
Or even that she is mighty?

I think she just IS
And names be damned
For getting in the way
Of the business of being.

The Mystery doesn’t have a name
Except ones we give It
To understand, diminish, consume, own.
When asked, the Mystery said
“I just AM”

Maybe
I’ve been reading the story wrong.
Maybe
In the garden
At the beginning
The Mystery said to the essence
Of male and female
And both and neither,
“Here are ten thousand wonderful things. They are good and very good. But if you give them names, that’s all they will be to you.”

Maybe naming is not a sacred duty
As I’d been taught
As much as the original objectification
That grows in the valley
Where the rivers
Of ego, materialism, fear,
And free will meet.

“You can ruin this by naming, and so seeing, and so treating, and so experiencing, some things as good and some things as evil, when all things just are, and in that being they are only love and beauty, and if you tell the lie of division how can you live in a place of truth and oneness? Maybe invent some clothes so you can pack them.”

Ten thousand abstractions started
In that concrete garden
And now we pave over ours
And put down AstroTurf.

But there are still real things,
Real moments.
Beloved, brilliant. beautiful.

Find one
And let its song sing you
And lead you
Home.