tell me my name
Plunging
into the deep sea,
my body dissolves in
still blue—
I find no longer “fish”
but silvery schools of fusilier,
that lonely grouper in a cave, a pair of
butterflyfish darting
between branches of Acropora.
Seagrass is now
a meadow of spoon-shaped Halophila
and beds of Thalassia feeding
pufferfish and nudibranch.
Linnaeus only carried on
what Adam knew needed doing.
Not a matter of discovering,
rather, a rite of knowing.
As fishermen must weave nets of names
for crab--kasag, lambay,
alimango, alimasag--
one sees only what one seeks to know.
When I love, this is where I must begin:
beloved, tell me my name.
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Submitted on May 02, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 31 sec read
- 1 View
Quick analysis:
Scheme | AXBCD EXAEXCAD XAAAXFAX BF |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 601 |
Words | 105 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 5, 8, 8, 2 |
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"tell me my name" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 12 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/85808/tell-me-my-name>.
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