This view, or its ancestral forms in this approximate location,
Had risen up before me, again and again and again, and had
Many names attached to it like labels floating on the waves
Of falling sandstone, upwelling lava: Silver Reef, Red Cliffs,
Harrisburg, Snow, Pine. All the punctuation in the world
Could not make the scenario less liquid, nonetheless.
There were earlier names, and earlier, and at some point
Gone in the haze the first one, and before that, none.
There were earlier fauna and flora among the earlier boulders,
And earlier, and at some point gone the first tongue of lava.
It seemed like I knew this, as if I were someone who'd been here.
So recognition had once again deceived me. When I saw,
Earlier, the familiar colleague coming out of the other
Familiar colleague's office, I had a panicked, prosopagnosic moment
Knowing I vaguely knew the face but could not place the person.
Shame at not being able to participate in the fiction
That is all naming obscured from me for that moment
The truth that I was experiencing, for once, the namelessness.
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