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The book The House of the World has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and is now available on Amazon.

What I Am

I am molecular.
Simple as the water in my glass.
Water that fell off peaches.
The glass born in a crucible.
A mother that cried at my birth.
A tree in the orchard
that knew drought,
had its limbs shorn in a storm.
My body that fights to keep me alive,
from being lame,
from dying of exhaustion,
so I can say,
I have no political party,
no religion,
no step-by-step method of living.

Only a heart that is dissolved by water
from a glass.
That the sun shines on me,
whether it cares or not,
that my life sings about nothing,
just the touch of coolness
in the evening,
the call of children,
that the grass, bless it,
keeps growing.
And the timbers inside my house
hold up the roof,
that sleep comes eventually
even after crying.

That there is nothing I want
except the admiration
of those I love.
For nothing,
for being excused
that I am no more than a shell
being pushed up,
left by the sea in its tides,
and I linger through twilights
waiting for a hand
to pick me up and listen,
to the words inside me,
saying,
I love you.

Published inIndex of all Poems