What’s In a Name

About this Poem: So, what's in a name? I, for one, never fully understood my given name of Douglas. Didn't even care much for the name. Then much later in life—I learned of its roots. A Scottish surname from the name of a town in Lanarkshire, itself named after a tributary of the river Clyde called the Douglas Water. It means "dark river," derived from Gaelic dubh "dark" and glais "water, river" (an archaic word related to glas "grey, green"). My parents sensed a course for my life and envisioned a future. Even now—it all seems to make sense.

I am the drizzle of night
seeping in tawny bogs
of an ancient evolution
I pour my essence into
a dark obsidian abyss of
distant trees in solitude
throngs of lonely rocks
or dismal sands of apathy

I shiver at high altitudes
tumbled in forlorn skies
wrangling frail shadows
into seeps of cold rivulets
slaking small alpine lakes—
nestled between shapes
of past glaciated carnage
and my ever-anxious heart

lakes paint living beauty
from soft palettes of peace
they reflect abundant life
embraced within circles
they nourish or preserve
my subdued crucible seeps
under quartzite monoliths
of an eon long forgotten

her tarn—bound turquoise
under a thinning indigo sky
clings tight—barely alive
in polished stone works
splashed in lingering song
of icy transparent fluid
I am lost—trickling in time
absorbed into her oblivion

I plunge baptized against
my fear of her judgment
within this silent cirque
of her stark invariability
ancient batholiths quiver
as I rise from my watery
confession—freed from
deep canyons of my doubt

I inhale her last fiery sun
embraced by holy spirits
that pour healing drops
in my blur of clouded sight
renewed in divine beauty
I bow in rosemary scents
anointed in her creation
whispering in twilight air

in this consecrated peace
with flows of setting sun
and fresh crystalline vision
I am buried in her mystery
my old callous mind weeps
under its disheveled frame
her watery elegance purifies
and mends my desolate heart

winds of a changing climate
have turned cruel to me
tying me up in heated anger
and a miserable fickleness
I am no longer the same
as I once was—predictable
but she has given me hope
to walk beside her reflection

a final churn of ruddy waves
beneath loitering winds
reflect colors of a dying sky
veiled beneath this oracle
cuddled in gentle gravity
of seeping stone columns
where silent waters pray
I bless her as an old friend

her silvery autumn laces
heal pains sunken in bones
and my aching sins of silence
the heavy redeeming breaths
of her early morning mists
grasp my still spirit in hers
I exhale pure nothingness
as my tears add to her grace

I am dark lonely waters—
wrung from my rocky pasts
under lakes of young dance
but as I fall and rise again—
in a forgiving cycle of life
in a home to my headwaters
atop citadels of spring air
—I have found the light