I can no longer think of you in vague groves;

I can no longer think of you without proper names—

and not just tulip-poplar, one standing among many,

but this tulip-poplar, this windy one scouring my screen:

you, brokenfingered fire-eater, tallest-in-the-yard,

arrow of God or of something else, quick alchemist:

you will be called Goldreen, and you will outpace

the almanacs with your turnings, and if you fall too fast,

I can but watch. Only you can fathom the source

of your secret name, and only you can beat out the song

of harps hung from your light-strangled branches.

And the names of those who might've played them.

I must quit my day job. I have found another calling:

to expose the lie of the foreign tongue, the notion

of human understanding—that I should not listen

to bark or bray or cool flutter, that I should not dog-ear

the unpaged dictionaries waving in every trunk,

that I should not learn a dirge for the each of you,

rather than the all, for in the all is nothing

either of us can keep. Sawfallen, Splitlightning,

Allorange, Ovenflame, Slightring, Coldpenny,

Leatherlantern—how will I have time to sleep?