Looking for My Name

I'm looking for my name.
Have you seen it?

It cannot be
a sound invented
by someone else
before I could speak
because your name is invented 

only by you.

Nor can it be
a sound copied
from man to child
across so many centuries
nobody really knows
where it came from
because I know
where my name comes from.

It comes from
the deepest part of me,
deep and dark and wet,
where muscles pound
and light is myth.

It comes from
the tenderest part of me,
which I'm afraid to touch
in case I feel
the flickering of eyelashes
magnified by a million.

It comes from
the youngest part of me,
as young as the unborn future,
so young
it is coming into being
forever.

So I know where my name comes from,
but that doesn't help me know
where it is.

It's in an unnamed place
as layered as road
as hidden as hurt
as alive as magma.

And when I find it,
I will carry it to the Sun
in the East,
hold it up
in my two hands
and blow.

River and Her Man

I, a witty human,
buzz at the surf.
It, a muscular river,
paws at the shale.

A mosquito and a hippopotamus,
we live up to the limit
of each other's worlds.

Applying tiny forces
in highly specific ways,
I call myself
sophisticated.

It roars in ascent
and in retreat,
ever outward facing.

It does not choose.
It is the most complete
embodiment of its own
possibilities.

In a boat, I row across it,
drawing a line
in the extended now
of my inner world.

It whispers
directly into my dreams,
from beneath,
at the softest part of my mind,

rolling against my
least-known shore
and doing what she
always does,

shaping me in ways
my clever brain
will never comprehend.