It could have fallen from any tree. A lack of naming, or perhaps of remembering. But I do remember this pine cone as animals must—not by language or the things we do by ritual or conceit, but by the sting of experience. Last fall, how sweetly it dropped upon your shoulder. Happy, I could still remember your name without learned associations the way my cat remembered our electric fence before she caressed it and discovered the name for pain. I have always found something sensitive about the scientists’ branching taxonomy, something romantic about christening the distinct spirals of the pines’ wooden flowers. Older, I am waiting for the day your name falls like this pine cone: strangely familiar, unburdened by memory’s tender, heavy branch, that I may pass it, guiltless and unaware, in the mulch.