The Great I Am
I am a poet and a hawk and a dove
I am a note played on a guitar
I am the song I sing with love
I am thunder heard from afar
I am the worried frown I wear
I am the shadow of a tree
I am the feeling behind a tear
I am an angel watching over thee
I am a statement of intent
I am a mirror of a struggling city
I am happy and content
I am the heart that breaks with pity
I am eleven men at play
I am nature's rolling seasons
I am a traveller on the way
I am a philosopher beset with reasons
I am a peaceful grazing sheep
I am a dog with no tail
I am the time I cannot keep
I am the whaler and the whale
I am the morning and the evening of the day
I am a face that smiled
I am all the things I dare not say
I am an infant child
I am Newton's falling apple
I am a solitary prince
I am an old abandoned chapel
I am the hurt that makes me wince
I am an ancient salty seadog
I am an old oak table
I am the burning log
I am the one who writes the label
I am a forgotten friend
I am the sun behind the cloud
I am a book without end
I am all that is not allowed
I am a lark singing in the sky
I am a view from above
I am a hundred questions why
I am a poet a hawk and a dove
I found this quote in one of my old notebooks this morning:
"Words have a certain magnetic mass and attract one another, they are sexual and procreate together, and they pracise magic which goes on all around me; they have compound eyes, like beetles, and keep peering at one another constantly, from all different angles: I am their matchmaker and pimp, I offer them a bed."
Hans Carl Artmann (1921-2000)
Thank you for reading. [The poem and the photograph are my own, the quote, a translation, was copied from a newspaper 15 years ago, and today tweaked by myself.] Here are some of my other poems @richardjuckes
