Poets United Mid-Week Motif : Saying the Names With Love

This week, fellow poets, I am pinch-hitting for our friend, Susan, who is recovering from recent back surgery.  Let's send her positive vibes, as we await her return. 

Our inspiration today  is Canadian poet Al Purdy's famous poem "Say the Names", written towards the end of his life. (He died in 2001.) The names of the places he loved roll through his poem like a prayer, as he bade farewell to the wild rivers and landscapes he would soon be leaving. 

Purdy was considered Canada's unofficial poet laureate. He was a prolific writer, producing, during his lifetime, 30 volumes of poetry, a novel, two volumes of memoir, and some books of letters and correspondence with other well-known writers.  Here is his famous poem, for your inspiration.

Say the Names
by Al Purdy

--say the names say the names
and listen to yourself
an echo in the mountains
Tulameen Tulameen
say them like your soul
was listening and overhearing
and you dreamed you dreamed
you were a river
Tulameen Tulameen
--not the flat borrowed imitations
of foreign names
not Briton Windsor Trenton
but names that ride the wind
Spillimacheen and Nahanni
Kleena Kleene and Horsefly
Illecillewaet and Whachamacallit
Lillooet and Kluane
Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump
and the whole sky falling
when the buffalo went down
say them say them remember
if you ever wander elsewhere
"the North as a deed and forever"
Kleena Kleene Nahanni
Osoyoos and Similkameen
say the names
as if they were your soul
lost among the mountains
a soul you mislaid
and found again rejoicing
Tulameen Tulameen

till the heart stops beating
say the names

*Al Purdy's works copyright © to The Estate of Al Purdy.

Mid-Week Motif : Saying the Names With Love

Our challenge this week : think of the names of the places that are most special to you, whose names sing in your heart and soul, the ones that mean Belonging, the names that take you home, and weave them through your poem. If there is only one name, write a poem about that. Take it from there - the format is wide open.

Please share your poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community.

                  (Next week Sumana's Midweek Motif will be ~ Beauty )