Comma, Question Mark

Comma, question mark
are common names 
of butterflies.
When I learned 
the names of flowers 
I’d seen all my life 
I felt complete.
I walked the dirt road
with a child

and told her
chicory, and later
goldenrod and aster.
The words were
true. I wanted to
entrust them to her,
keys to a kingdom
partly plundered.
Both butterflies

are brushfoots,
hard to tell apart.
Their punctuation 
marks are silver-white,
slight keyholes
that unlock
a line of thought
or leave it hanging..

But thought is,
like the poet Nerses said, 
a torrent conquering fortress
hill and home
no butterfly
not even a kaleidoscope
could pause
or parse,

the only counter
balance
to brute
force,which always wants
the land 
that isn’t even ours 
but is at best
a field 

so vast that no one,
no one’s thought, 
can conquer.
One Independence Day
you asked me what
I valued most
about the country.
The land, I said, meaning
this living field.