What We No Longer Know

Stooping to pluck a flecked wildflower,
nameless to me as yet (which is my own fault, 
as such abundance is a fact, a gift)
I furrow, feeling the deficit of all the names

I cannot fathom, never having known. And more– 
to fully fathom: sound its depths, or sound with lips,
or encompass what the arms can hold,
or–the way this bee, miraculously

holding itself aloft with too-small wings (how? how?) 
peruses the inner sanctum of these petals, 
and when pleased and a wee bit tipsy 
(hence, perhaps, the bumble?) rises, 

gold-dusted and delighted with its knowledge,
the body of which we have mostly forgotten. 

Originally published in Forma Journal.