Nick of name

My mother picked my name

Out of the base of her experience

With the foresight to make it simple

As if she already knew that I needed to travel

Nothing too heavy and nothing too light

And nothing extra, just enough

One letter with a tail for balance

Another with a hook to hold on

To my answered prayers

And two that reached for the heavens

Just four, complete, completion

Yang and yin, you and me

Fusing, marinating and blending

A synthesis of life producing

The realization of joined ideas

Four ways for a day’s labor

A work always in progress

I fell in love with words young

My crafting and showing

Me in ink, me on paper, me in chalk

Me in the stability of helium

One, two, three, four electrons

The basis of all organic life

Length, breadth, width and time

Four testaments to Christ

Four worlds in the tree of life

I never grew too tall

Or too thin and was thus spared

Being ridiculed for either

And the nick of my name

Can’t be changed or diminutivized

Without changing who I am

To you

I am as volatile as the air and fire

As calm as the water and earth

Not in contradiction

But in balancing quadrants

And always in motion

My thoughts never shut down

Patterning and reconfiguring

Turning the wheel

Clockwise and opposite

  

I am not interchangeable

With any one past or present

My name does not hide me

In Slavery, in Christianity or darkness

I choose to be who I am

You chose me to be yours

I accept your hypocoristic

And hold that name in my heart

© NP 09/6/12