A Minute to Say My Name

What do I say now,

as I live and breathe?

What’s underneath our noise—

the highway buzz,

fall’s leaf-blowers,

the human chatter:

clank and clamor?

Songbirds first— 

no phones, no numbers, how do they tweet?

Their calls to prayer, off-screen,

punctuated by guffaws from agnostic crows.

My first deep plunge—

breathed into

the root of my red, wet heart,

this song

drunk from a deep,

deep spring.

Yet, in flies a whir,

a mosquito.

I shake, trying to dislodge its metallic point,

so like last night’s news.

Do I really care what people,

like mosquitos suppose,
their truths or lies?

Another breath—let free—then—

a chickadee speaks her small self

chicka-dee-dee-dee,

an honest tweet that

speaks her name

and stops my outbreath.

Holding that breath in awe,

I wonder. I wonder, I wonder,

what if my name were everything—

What if my name were

the only thing I’d say?

-Copyright by Claire Germain Nail 2017