Some names escape me,
here one day, gone the next.
“Magnolia” disappears,
an ancient genus, magnolia,
but I forget the word—
a pearl lost in murky waters
despite all my groping in the mud.
(Ah, the mud. Might a pure lotus
rise from this ooze?)
Without warning, the word returns,
big and bright as a supermoon.
“Geraniums,” too,
those lovely medicinal,
edible blooms—lemon, ginger, mint flavors.
I see their faces;
their names, alas, bolt
from memory.
My hopeful search party
returns empty-handed.
Without a name, a flower
is still a flower.
“A rose by any other
word would smell as sweet.”
Still, losing these names
puzzles me.
A flower’s life is fleeting.
Frail morning glories bloom
like tender trumpets,
die the same day.
Does the loss of the name
soften the loss of the blossom?
Alan Swope’s poetry has been published in Fort Da, Front Range Review, Perceptions Magazine, Poetic Sun, and Roanoke Rambler. He is a practicing psychotherapist and an emeritus professor with the California School of Professional Psychology. Alan enjoys singing, acting, travel, cinema, and gardening.