That age-old question “who am I?” haunts us from birth. We sense we are more than what we seem to be, more than the sum of our parts, more than this thread of life that spans so short a distance.

Sometimes a felt-sense of that “something more” emerges in consciousness with a ring of clarity–then fades just as quickly. Sometimes if we are quick or lucky or persistent, we capture what we sensed in a word or image, a poem or song.

What we capture is always an echo of what we’re trying to get at, a finger pointing to the moon, not the thing itself.

The following poem is trying to capture that “something more.” I titled it “entelechy” which is a philosophical term that denotes both the perfect essence of an object or person, and that which propels it toward self-fulfillment. This is the closest I could come in finding a word to capture what I was after.

Entelechy

I am spare

I am clean uncluttered space

I am a fine line curving inward and out

I am a high sweet note wrung from the still air

I am a cup of cool water drawn from the clear stream

I am bone bleached and bare, tossed upon a windswept shore

Taste and see

I am spare

In some ways, this poem is like a prayer. When I am confused, or out of sorts, or besides myself, I turn to it to remind me of that something more or something deeper that I am at heart. Meditating upon these images brings me home to myself.

I am not sure if the poem will mean anything to anyone but me, but I wanted to share it here.

The artwork by Sohan Qadri that precedes these words captures for me, so beautifully, that same essence. I wrote another post about his artwork and what it means to me here.

The Art of Sohan Qadri