Metamorphosis Poem by Linda Hepner

No longer call me by the name my mother gave me,
something simple, sounding pretty, not too deep;
my father, thinking his way darkly, tried to save me,
and hid away my name for me to find and keep.

In baby-blanket pink she had me swaddled -
I wore it, bore it, clouded by a cloak
defining and confining me, then hobbled
asleep inside the garment, I awoke.

Just as the Nile divides and slides into its delta,
it has forgotten how it swirls and tumbles through
its southern cataracts and crags, runs helter-skelter,
fed, ever-changing by the rains, but can’t stay true

to names we give it. Recognize the seasons;
we alter with our losses, loves, the coat
of many changing hues we chose for reasons
embedded in our source now faint, remote.

Young Jacob woke from restless hours of tossing, dreaming,
and named the stone that marked his coming transformation;
when years had passed, returning to his brook augmented, streaming,
he took the name that he had earned with pain, his nation.

Naomi too, bereft, said, “Call me Mara, ’
with insight that redeemed her from the pit
of self inflicted pity, as with Sara,
and Joseph casting off his coat, spot-lit

by crystal judgment, visionary taking stock
of streams that were a-changing; Jabbok flowing fast
into the Jordan….. Girl to woman,
I unlock
the name my father gave me,
Leah,
found at last.