2021 Words and Music Writing Competition - co-runner-up
selected by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Embodiment

To be a girl’s braid pre-wind, wound tight
for the day, tied down and ribboned

proclaims a readiness to get to work,
a desire to master naming.

Covering the lagoon, green-headed birds
float with their brown companions.  

I don’t say Anas platyrhynchos because I don’t
know the Latin.

But when I encounter their beauty,
I still label – Mallard.

To identify accurately has established merit.
Thank God for doctors.  Yes,

learn to name
but do not stay.

To encounter what is beyond a diagnosis:
Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia

is to walk the gravel
next to who is in pain.

Last week, two women with fifth graders enter hospice.
Four days ago, Pawel was murdered on the bit of grass

between his new house and the street.
Tonight, on my drive home from the bakery,

my mother calls to say the cousin, who long ago
showed me how to climb a sand pile,

has had a heart attack, has died.
He is two years younger than I am.

His twinkling wife and six kids must face
his wood working tools, his unfinished projects.

Funerals of both mothers stream online.  A friend texts
the name of each familiar song as it comes, texts a

play-by-play of tender eulogy jokes, putting me there
as I roll out pie, help customers, make change.

Back to work from Pawel’s funeral,
my business partner grasps for words to explain

the walk from the church to the street
with Pawel’s friends, his husband.

She says, tying her apron,
“Now I understand the jazz funeral in my body.”

Everything we know to name
comes in first through the senses.

And what are we here for if not to walk
the gravel path next to hurt, next to who is excluded.

If your belly is full, give the best.
Become a keyless gate.  

If your belly is full or empty, untether
from your own classifications:

not for me, smarter than, addicted.
Unloosen what has braided you.

Leave behind even the keyless gate.
Dance through the open field as

unencumbered bird, then
as air, ongoing.