What's in a name?

What makes a stone a stone, a tree a tree?
An accident of nature, blinding chance,
A tapestry and one majestic dance,
Or can the human tongue create the sea?
A rose by other names might smell as sweet,
But it, like other roses, sparks romance,
We know it is a rose at every glance,
Yet we might change it by our mind’s decree.
Were we to name the rose an apple tree,
Perhaps we’d see a greener shade of red,
But it is still a rose, however said,
No matter how we see it differently.
We see the rosiness in roses red,
The universe is woven with such thread.
-Tyler William O’Neil
-August 21, 2009