… Bee

I stood in a longhouse

with a woman who may or may not

be Mohawk. Some shift their opinions

about her like meteorologists, as if

her blood were a storm system tracked

in its comings and goings. But the father

of her two sons was, without question, Seneca.

We knew that, in Haudenosaunee country, a father

is to some degree irrelevant, that her own

shifting identity would impact her sons’ lives

like a gene vulnerable to betrayal, causing

certain, terminal conditions. She waited

on an elder she called Steam (warning I was not

to call the elder woman by that name). Steam

(not Steam) would observe the boys, understand

their natures, give them their Creator names defining

their lives during the next ceremony. I confessed

my namelessness, confessed my longhouse- and fluency-

deficient community, and confessed that my clan

mother, three hours away, did not know me well

enough to give me a name, confessed my community followed

a more casual ceremony. You find your name after a social misstep,

a dubious facial feature, a birth defect. Names offer

the name-givers comfort, that your challenge is harder

than theirs, no matter the truth.

Our names are a convoluted toughening of our skins. My name

is not like Steam (no one is forbidden to use it). No one

calls me Batman because of my status, my utility

belt, my impressive batpole, my agility, my muscles,

my profile in spandex, my virtues, but because I wore

the cape to an older age than I should have, and could

continue to wear it now, as that shit is not going away

any time soon. Even kids who only know Christian Bale

or Michael Keaton, lurking in latex and leather hood,

still think Batman is my name.

And this is why I have no memory for when or how you became

the Bumblebee, what it means, beyond the literal.

You soar in gardens, spend days ensuring growth,

and if metaphors are at work here, this one seems true

enough to keep you in amber wings, fuzzy yellow rings,

black lacquer torso, and sensitive antennae.

What metaphor suits the night I left on the Amtrak

for Chicago, past 1:00 a.m., while you stood

on the platform, watching those cars pull out,

the night I wanted to leap from the train, stay?

I cannot invent new names for the ways we slow,

struggle, attempt to maintain the illusion of futures

without measure, defy actuary numbers and because I have

gone closer to the light than you have, the story is

easier to craft and finesse than it should be.

Pollination trails are smaller than those I’m forced

to fly in, and lying in Little Rock, Santa Fe, Manhattan,

Minneapolis, Seattle, hotel rooms, the ellipse of your name

trail winds me home, waiting, dusted in pollen and history.