"… Bee" by Eric Gansworth

… Bee
by Eric Gansworth

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.





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