Then God said, O.K. let's get this show
on the road, boy, get some names
stuck on these critters, and Adam,
his head on the ground in a patch of tiny
pink-white flowers, said,
mmn, just a sec.
· Don McKay, Twinflower

she calls dragonflies
darning needles

dipping to sip pondwater
over and over, hovering in place
as if held in thimbled fingers

tiny ones with invisible wings
land pointedly on one leaf, then another
as if they, not garden spiders
leave thin lines labyrinthing space
where flies are likeliest.

in the japanese garden
a long-legged harvestman
flexes its legs, floating on wood like
living calligraphy

we called those
daddy-longlegs, or rain spiders. and didn't squish them
because if you did it was supposed to rain. same with
water-doctors.

in the botanical garden
all the plants have nametags
but nothing has been done about the animals.

lazing on the grass
under an indecisive sky,
clouds are unintelligible
but the tip of the olympic tower
jutting above arboretum
is plainly the prow of a ship

a crow coasts across cloudbank,
black spackle on blue

she folds rose petals she finds in the grass
until the pink begins to bruise. i close my eyes
and the sun plunges the insides of my eyelids red

trying to find a place amid the litany
of latin names newly littering my memory
for one more name
for a poem,

she calls dragonflies
darning needles