The Name of the Rose

“The name of the rose on her lips as she
sank into darkness was…”

but the dream phrase left upon waking
was cut off before the crucial word was

heard and only the teaser remembered
so that I wonder at times at human

knowledge also that we’re often left with
just the teaser that is so pregnant with

meaning but whose pith is somehow obscured
and like flags waving in a breeze

we’re left with the commotion but without the
import that will give all humankind such

ease we’re left with the motion in the air such
phrases make such cogitations but without

swimming up into them to finish the
sentence with our bodies as it were and thus embody the

very name of the rose whatever it might be
“courage” came to mind when I awoke but it

wasn’t “courage” so that it might also be
“intuition” or “pure volition” or even a symbolically

charged name like “The name of the rose is
white light in a dark place” or

“The black petaled stallion of forbearance”
“The magnificent lion’s mane of compassionate radiance”

or just “The name of the rose is The Name”
and let that stand in space as is with all its

attendant but obscure reverberations

we can’t know for sure until the rose scent
overwhelm us and

we swoon into the original rosy
alphabetization of our being

---

6/7/2006 (from In the Realm of Neither)

Categories: Poems, Love