The Truth Of What I Am Poem by Mystic Qalandar

A little way from home,
across the road,
among the trees behind the bungalows,
I watch myself
come and go.

Happy as I can be,
heedless of everything,
I dash from here to there,
at every hour—
by day, by night—
as though the whole world
were made for play.

I fly through the branches
without a thought of falling,
leaping from tree to tree,
gliding with the wind,
hurtling at impossible speed
wherever I please.

And I wonder:

how do I move so swiftly
and never lose my footing?
How do I land
upon the smallest branch
without ever missing?

Then—
in the space between two thoughts—
I am gone.

Down to the earth I disappear,
searching beneath the leaves
for what I buried long ago,
finding what I gathered
when summer was generous,
keeping faith with the winter
I cannot yet see.

I must have my stores somewhere—
hidden beneath the earth,
waiting for the snow
when the trees grow bare
and the world falls silent.

Yet through all my running,
all my leaping,
all my sudden flights,
I make no sound.

One moment I am there.

The next—

nothing.

So swiftly have I vanished
that the watcher below
cannot see me go.

And there I remain,
standing upon the ground,
alone with my astonishment,
wondering:

Where have I gone?

Then, after a while,
I return.

Suddenly—

there I am again,
whole in the branches,
alive in the wind,
moving as though
I had never disappeared.

And in that fleeting moment
something in me grows still.

For I have seen myself.

Not as a thought.
Not as a memory.
Not as a fragment
caught between appearances—

but whole.

For one blessed instant
the watcher and the watched
were no longer two.

Something warm remained—
a quiet light
I could neither hold
nor explain.

Only a hope:

that I may remain
near enough to the truth
that, whatever weather comes,
whatever winter falls,
I may see myself again—

not in fragments,
not in passing,
not merely as something
that appears and disappears,

but as the whole truth
of what I am.

—MyKoul