The Mad Poet of the Year blog posts share the poetry of a long-time Mad Poet. This year-long appointment provides readers with a deep dive of the writer’s work and thoughts on poetry. We are thrilled to have Bill Van Buskirk serve as the Mad Poet of the Year for 2025.
NAMING DAY
To Miranda at two weeks old
This morning
we gather to bestow
the most persistent thing about you—
the first of many ornaments
through which you’ll shine from a distance,
and through this wisp, this word,
the thread of your significance will spin
into the grand tapestry of other lives.
Now,
as we chant your fragile name,
our warm thick breath thins out
into objectivity of mere air.
Yet, by this word, we fix you in a web
of speech and prayer that stretches
back past everything we name,
rippling in a more than human breeze—
anonymous, ancestral, abundant.
In the end, we’ll be nothing more
than what we’ve meant to you:
slender memory,
ancient trance,
invisible atmosphere
from which you’ll draw a lifetime’s breath—
effortless, like we do now—planted here,
at home in an immensity of cold morning,
receding into all that moves away from us.
What shall we call it—
universe, night we cannot let alone?
We, who paint the sky
with autobiography,
we make a place in it for you—
connect the dots between the stars
even as they burst into forever—
faster than naming, faster than breath.
Where we come from, where we go,
there are no names. We shiver here,
huddled around our magic,
we note the moments—
early winter sky on the move,
cutting wind, some water,
a little blood sometimes—
we, who are halfway to history,
want to be forgotten gently.
So, softly, softly we call you to us…
Background and Title:
This poem is about a ceremony that two friends held for the naming of their infant daughter. About thirty of us gathered in a brisk and sunny November morning. There was quite a range of ages. The youngest was as the maid of honor. The oldest was in her seventies. Perhaps because of this disparity, there was a heightened sense of the passage of time, of beginnings and endings. The poem tries to re-create the feel of that day.
The Epigraph:
Originally this poem had no epigraph. There was just a lazy stanza that started the piece but had little energy and provided no context. I liked the poem so much that I did not see this until friends in a critique group found the poem obscure. There was a lot of confusion about the setting that distracted them from the poem. In public readings, this had not been a problem.
There was space enough to explain the context—a non-denominational gathering of friends to celebrate the naming of an infant. But on the page, many readers ended up confused, especially if their religious background had no naming or baptism ritual—a bad place from which to start. I eventually deleted that initial stanza, and settled on the title and epigraph to provide an orientation for the reader.
This morning
The two-word first line tries to ground the poem in time and place and suggest its purpose. It would call the reader into an enhanced here-and-now similar to the one we experienced on that day. The line, alone on the page, occupies a privileged place. It is meant to slow the reader down, to suggest a kind of sacred space.
we gather to bestow
the most persistent thing about you—
the first of many ornaments:
through which you’ll shine from a distance,
and through this wisp, this word,
the thread of your significance will spin
into the grand tapestry of other lives.
The word choice in this stanza further clarifies the poem’s intent and puts the naming act in a context that is both social and sacred. By being present, we witnessed and participated in the act of naming. The word “we” occurs sixteen times in the poem. I did not realize this until it was pointed out in a critique group. I think that all this repetition provides a steady drumbeat that suggests over and over the importance of a vital community. To me, this first “we” has a ministerial feel to i, “gather” is something that religious congregations do. In addition, the word “bestow” carries an implication of inheritance and testament—a gift and a truth handed from one generation to the next.
“Ornament” is another word that stands out. A young girl can be expected to collect and discard thousands of ornaments throughout life; but a name is, perhaps, the first. It may also be the most enduring, but it is not one she chooses. It is given by her parents, and indirectly by her community. It is one of the first things that every person she meets will encounter. Yet it will be “worn” throughout her life. It will shine through a multitude of accessories. It will be a thread that connects the tapestry of her life to the lives of all who come to know her.
Now
as we chant your fragile name,
our warm thick breath thins out
into objectivity of mere air.
Now
Another one-word line that calls us into how we felt that morning. It was an event both intimate and ennobling. As we spoke her name, it became a chant in which we became conscious of the solemnity of our own breath—transactions with an atmosphere that keeps us alive moment after moment. And in these moments, we became aware of our dependency—on how our fragile lives mingled with that of the infant.
On that cold November morning, that breath became a metaphor for our shared fragility. As it took shape in the shock of the cold, it appeared briefly and vanished into “objectivity of mere air” (like our lives?). Thus, breath and name, life and death— were fused into a common atmosphere. As we repeated her name, she was “born” as a member of our community. She became “human,” not just in body, but in breath and speech. From subject to object, from Birth to Death, she would move in the same transit through which we all move, the one in which we are blessed and made sacred. Like the child, we too, are but a few mere breaths from death.
Yet by this word we fix you in a web
of speech and prayer that stretches
back past everything we name,
In this morning, we recognize our place in a timeless grandeur. In bestowing a name, we realize a continuity fraught with import. It is a continuity with ancestors to whom we owe our existence, but whom we can never know, or even imagine. Thus, for all its fragility, the breath (and the names it carries) is fraught with significance and mystery. In slender moments like these, humans have been naming one another for centuries. In all eras, in all nations, generations long since forgotten have participated in this ritualistic Web of Naming, that has been…
rippling in a more than human breeze—
anonymous, ancestral, abundant.
In the end we’ll be nothing more
than what we’ve been to you:
Against the significance of this ancient ritual, we are humbled. We feel our birth and death at once. We sense the web that we too took shape in. We fuse with the same anonymity from which she has just emerged, and into which we’ll pass. In the end, we’ll be only…
slender memory,
ancient trance,
invisible atmosphere
from which you’ll draw a lifetime’s breath—
effortless, like we do now—planted here,
at home in an immensity of cold morning,
receding into all that moves away from us.
In the solemnity of this ritual, we intuit our non-existence. One day we will be only a vague memory. And yet, here and now we are alive in our moment—the breath we transient breathers draw from this cold November morning is from the same air the child breathes (and will continue to breathe) long after we are gone. With her breath she too will name her world. Thus, the morning is redolent of life and death, naming and anonymity, here and gone.
What shall we call it—
universe, night we cannot let alone?
This mysterious morning defies naming. The poem cannot name it. It can only ask question after question. Nor can we. Yet we cannot give up our naming. Like our ancestors, we name a universe we can barely imagine…
We, who paint the sky
with autobiography,
we make a place in it for you—
connect the dots between the stars
even as they burst into forever— …faster than naming, faster than breath:
And what do we name it with? With the same depth images and myths that we have inherited, that have given shape to our lives. Thus, we have been humanizing the constellations for thousands of years. These pinpricks of light are not random. They are shaped by an inheritance that is most intimate and infinitesimal in us—the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves over and over. We live under stars our ancestors named, just as she will live under ours. We gift the child with a place in our universe, the one she will rename in her time, with her own version of who we were.
Where we come from, where we go,
there are no names.
Even as we “paint the sky” we realize that the constellations we name are receding away from us. The universe, we are told, is expanding. We are becoming smaller and smaller with breath-taking speed. Through naming, we tame that vastness through a language we can share. We testify, by our mortal existence, that between this life, this death there is an interim, ennobled and made precious, by the tender life we gift with names. Without it we are anonymous, undreamt of, forgotten, cold, nameless.
We shiver here,
huddled around our magic,
we note the moments—
early winter sky on the move,
cutting wind, some water,
a little blood sometimes—
What can we do but huddle together? Take life one precious moment at a time. Yet together, we contain the undeniable magic of naming. We celebrate it by noting our moments. These names contain whatever is still great in us, hold us in all we see and feel. They contain the energy through which we name the stars, the morning, who we are, who we were, and this little infant. So, we do what we can. We reach out to her.
we, who are halfway to history,
want to be forgotten gently.
So, softly, softly we call you to us
Bill Van Buskirk’s poems have appeared in The Comstock Review, The Paterson Literary Review, The Mad Poets’ Review and many others. His chapbook, Everything that’s Fragile is Important, received honorable mention in the Jesse Bryce Niles Chapbook contest sponsored by the Comstock Review (2007). His book, This Wild Joy that Thrills Outside the Law, won the Joie de vivre contest sponsored by the Mad Poets’ Review. (2010). His latest book is The Poet’s Pocket Guide to Steady Employment (2023).