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Before the Naming
by Penny Harter

Yesterday I met some unknown flowers blooming
along the foundation of the neighboring condo—
the former home of an old woman who died some
years ago. I’d never noticed them before, though I’ve
lived here a decade, never witnessed their blossoms.

Like an aging nature spirit, a woodland wise-woman,
my neighbor tended her garden as if each species were
her child. She even rescued the tiny, failing rosebush
given to me when my husband died, found for it the
fertile, sunny corner where it thrived.

She planted her flowers, and they endure though she
is gone into a wicker casket strewn with roses, given
a green burial bordering the woods. Yesterday, I could
not name those pink and white pitchers, but today
I find them in a photograph, name them calla lilies.

Before the naming, seeing. Before the seeing, pausing
long enough to be there, to slowly approach whatever
is calling you into its family, and then to listen for what
it has to tell you—perhaps a name it has given itself,
or the name it has chosen for you.

PHOTO: Pink calla lilies. Photo by Ethan Robertson. 

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This poem is one of many that I wrote and posted almost daily during the pandemic lockdown from spring 2020 to spring 2021. I wanted to offer hope, calm, and healing during those months of chaos and fear. Most of the poems in that collection result from my daily rides along meandering country roads down here in South Jersey, or from walks. Being present, bearing witness to the natural world has always sustained and inspired me. “Before the Naming” is included in the gathering of many those poems in my newest book, Still-Water Days. 

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Penny Harter’s work has appeared in Persimmon Tree, Rattle, Tiferet, and many other journals, as well as in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry column and numerous anthologies. Her most recent collections are A Prayer the Body Makes and Still-Water Days (Kelsay Books, 2020; 2021). A featured reader at the 2010 Dodge Poetry Festival, she has won three fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Art˜s, two fellowships from Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA), and awards from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and the Poetry Society of America. She lives in the South Jersey shore area. To find her books, visit Kelsay Books and Amazon.