It Comes Through the Branches

The crabapple tree, dense with leaves, wounded by age, its foliage fluttered open and fluttered closed. Branches swayed and we know wind through the gaps of leaves, like blanks in my diary, where a subterranean form fluctuates. The forgetting function f (x) which forgets its argument f ( ), yet I remember the windowpane, where the emerald light streamed in, and the question may go like this of my life: “And where were you on the day in question?” The answer may be: “Sir, all my days are questions, but on that particular day, I was leagues under the sea, of all things, naming, naming the things of the world. “A name is a handle on a cup, a tag on a suitcase. I call Sam “Sam,” and Harry “Harry.” Confucius said the first step to knowledge is calling things by their correct names.” The crabapple, stems, triangular leaves, silhouette on the old house windowpane, like Sheffer strokes and other logic symbols. The closure of the tree is the world. The knowing and the known twirled in the bedroom like a flamenco dancer stepping to the guitar of Carlos Montoya, hands clapping, heels hitting the floor as the fingers strum and roll the rasqueados. Naming was a game on daffodils, ferns, and clovers on the hills. We live, we name, what we love, we love its name. In one summer, in the life span of insects, in one afternoon, the tree flutters open, the tree flutters closed. The world spins open, it spins closed. My ears are heavy with the music now. The oak does not mind if one calls it “Oak” nor a rose “Rose.” Language is naming and we do the naming. We are the named. Wind through the chimes, water on the Thames, water rippling on the sandbar, fingers plucking the guitar. I left my hometown full of names; I will go a long distance with those names. I have undergone many a changes, but I am I even if my name changes. Koon Woon March 24, 2024