A rose, rose. A violet, violet. A jade, jade.
No. The architecture of each, a refusal.
Rose is not rose nor violet violet nor jade jade.
But each is what it is, not what it seems.

What each seems is what of each gets seen.
Though what we see isn't the thing seen.

The petals of the rose are violet and jade.
Thus the petals of the rose look, to us, rose.

The shape of the violet absorbs all but violet.
The violet we see is the violet a violet rejects.

A rose is a rose is a rose, but not as a rose.
Jade is the name of jade, not the jade named.


About This Poem
"I think it's beautiful and weird and dangerous that we name things according to what we see as their attributes (and attribute things according to names). 'Hothouse' is from a book about how we see, and everything that interferes with seeing."
-Raymond McDaniel

About Raymond McDaniel
Raymond McDaniel is the author of "The Cataracts" (Coffee House Press, 2017). He teaches at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

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The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day[at]poets.org.


(c) 2016 Raymond McDaniel. Originally published in Poem-a-Day, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate