WHO I AM

WHO I AM

for Hana-Lyn Churchill

 

Who I am has a lifespan

no longer than who I was

or who I will be tomorrow.

How many fireflies is it

from here to the stars?

There is no birth or death in the moment

and the Big Bang hasn’t happened yet.

Now is present.

Now is future.

Now is past.

The truest way to ask a question

and expect a serious answer

is to make sure no one is listening

on either side of the silence.

Nothing is Now.

Nothing is Here.

Who needs to disappear?

We’re all just rivers with no banks

losing track of our flowing.

Our knowing is just the spontaneous flowering of events,

wine in the rootless vines of desert tents

looking up at the stars

as if we knew what we were looking at.

The vision is always changing.

God never paints the same sunset twice.

So why cling to your thoughts like personal possessions

as if they were cobwebs in the corners of empty picture-frames

signing the absence with your names?

And don’t tell me everything happens for a reason

when it’s as clear as a painted ceiling

everything happens for a feeling.   

Outside my window

Orion rising through the trees

with Sirius gnashing its colours

like the fangs of glass rainbows

smashing at his heels like chandeliers

and the vast oceanic presence of the night

under every leaf and shadow of awareness

when the darkness reflects on itself

and the light kneels before its own intelligence

as the great blood seal of the secret message in the human heart

breaks through the emblems and symbols

it stamped on space like embryos of wax

and releases the stars and the nightbirds into the air

like the profound acts of an unbounded madness

grounded in the facts of why we’re here.

 

PATRICK WHITE