Who Am I

A recurrent theme in my life and I suspect in the lives of many people has centered around this question: "Who am I". Though, many of us are taught to dismiss this question or to give it a superficial answer, nevertheless I believe the question is one of those questions which speaks to the meaning of our humanity and needs a considered reply. The poem that follows is my small attempt to answer this big question.


Who am I

Who am I

I ask myself in the quite of a solitude,

Am I 
the wind
the rain
snow

ice or the cold
the dryness of now
perhaps
a sigh or a smile?

Am I a story with no ending or
everything in between,
a dream?

Maybe loneliness
a wrinkle on a man's face
the silver streak of hair
a fullness that knows
no where to go but here?

Am I sky
cloud
moon
the night that meets day
the darkness that greets the light?

Am I a song sung
to an indifferent universe
a heart at the edge of breaking?

Maybe I am music, a single sweet note or gallant chord
these small, feeble words
longing to speak,
varied colored flowers singing a
Spring into existence.

Who am I,
am I mountain
stream
lake
river,

a single precious you hiding
in storms or in the calm of a late summer night
nestled in the surrounding choral sound of crickets?

Maybe a child
playing hide and seek with God on the shore or
only images of past, present, of things to come
or only now.

Maybe I am death not knowing I am death
word
sentence
paragraph or
a helpless sad question seeking a companion.

Am I this poem
only a beginning, a simple farewell to yesterday
change
a stillness that
insists on asking, who am I
hope,  hopelessness
birth, dying or
taking tea on a snow filled afternoon
a fire in the stove, laughing?

Who am I then when the dawn wakes up the day and
meets ocean and sand, am I
a single precious you waiting for love?

Who am I
my heart would know
out of the surplus confusion of words
a heart beats out the question
with every beat
a scar on a old soldier's face

Who am I
out of that surplus confusion
perhaps,
a bird
come sing with us.