This is another poem about naming something.
I guess poets more than anyone are as obsessed with.
I had a cousin Susan who decided a number of years
ago to change her name to Shoshana.
And I had grave difficulty with this
and would giggle every time I introduced her and offended her
greatly.
And to make up for it, I wrote this poem for her
and sent it to her.
And she wrote back thanking me and telling me that, actually,
she had changed back to Susan.
[LAUGHTER]
A Name.
For Susan who became Shoshana.
David means beloved.
Peter is a rock.
They named me Linda, which means beautiful in Spanish,
a language I never learned.
Even naked, we wear our names.
In the end, we leave them behind carved
into desktops and gravestones.
Inscribed on the flyleaf of bibles where on another page
God names the generations of Shem, Ham, and Japhet.
Homer cast a spell with names giving us
the list of warriors and their ships
I read my children to sleep by.
There are as many names underfoot as leaves in October.
They burn as briefly on the tongue
and their smoke could darken the morning sky to dusk.
Remember the boy of seven who wandered the Holocaust alone
and lost, not his life, but his name.
Or the prince whose name was stolen with his kingdom.
When I took my husband's name and fastened it to mine,
I was as changed as a child when the priest sprinkles it
with water and the name that saves it a place in heaven.
My grandfather gave me a name in Hebrew I never heard,
but it died with him.
If I had taken that name, who would I be?
And if he calls me now, how will I know to answer?