Here is the third poem from my recent poetry collection, available here.

This poem was written only recently,  for the ‘Where the Streams Come From’ exhibition, which was one of the inspirations for the book. I was playing again with the idea of how everything is connected and also with the question of what holds everything together. It brings me to an idea of God.

Do you remember that ancient Hebrew story of Moses and his encounter with a burning bush? He somehow knew that he was in the presence of the divine, and asked for the name of the divinity- this from a culture in which there were many Gods. This God told him his or her name was ‘I am’.

I just am.

I am behind and between everything. I am wrapped up in everything. Everything contains me and I contain everything.

This poem is part of my on-going attempt to understand something of this God. Poetry, I think, is perhaps unique in the way it allows us to encounter and engage with ideas of the divine. It is perhaps no surprise to hear that over one third of the books of the Hebrew Bible are poetry- something we often lose in translation…

 

I am

 

I am bird, I am wind

I am scaled, I am skinned

I am soil, I am stone

I am flesh, I am bone

I am ebb, I am flow

I am stream, I am snow

I am all of these things

And I am nothing

 

I am love, I am light

I am morning, I am night

I am atom, I am star

I am close, I am far

I am start, I am end

I am stranger, I am friend

I am all of these things

And I am nothing

 

I am silence, I am song

I am right, I am wrong

I am sea, I am shore

I am less, I am more

I am young, I am old

I am iron, I am gold

I am all of these things

And I am nothing