✨ Renaming

a network of belonging...

Renaming

If my name were Scarlet I would
go by Apple. If my name were Apple
I would go by Fall. If my name were Fall
I would drive the back roads
where buses collect children
dressed for the photos of a new school year.

I would fall into a forest of Aspen
and Birch trees, disappear
into a network of belonging,
reappear in water highlighting
the color of stones in a river.

If I had the name of a river stone
I would be unbreakably lovely.
I would stand in front of glass doors
on my birthday, survive the sound a car makes
when a woman forgets about brakes
and applies the gas.

I would change my name to Sapphire
and go by blue. If I were Blue I’d be lucky
to be alive. If I were lucky I’d win a lottery
of renaming, first myself and then others.
I would rename all that is bad in this world,
starting with school shootings,
rename the shooters, so they would learn
to break, to cry, to endure, to learn.

I would rename war in simple algorithms
of tolerance and shared resource.
I would rename cruelty to animals
by eliminating cruelty.
I would rename the entire political structure
of this country so that we’re all
on one side of an ocean
listening.

I would rename the glaciers
and ice caps in place.
I would rename the earth’s
gravitational pull and I would pull
all that is good in this universe of named
of unnamed, of renamed.

—Megan Wheeler 

Used by permission of the poet. Photo by Serhii Tyaglovsky, Creative Commons, via Unsplash.