What Is Life? Poem by Mary Champion

Life is a fluctuating stream of energy -
uncreated!
beyond that it is indefinable.

Life cannot be captured in words.
If it were possible to confine it
within a dictionary definition,
it would cease to be.

What we can define
with absolute precision,
are forms of life.
But life itself
will always defy
our attempts to define it.

Life is beyond words.
It has no satisfactory metaphors
or similes.
Life is an eternal mystery.
Life is,
Life was
and forever it will be.

What more can be said?
Life is without beginning
and without end -
consequently it is
decentralised
so, life is ubiquitous.
It is everything,
but it knows nothing.

Life is immaterial,
but matter cannot exist without it.
We clutch at life,
but it eludes our grasp.

Life knows nothing of the forms it takes,
yet it is all that we
are conscious of.

Life is free -
free of reason -
free of purpose -
free of will.
Life is unmitigated madness.
Life is unrepeatable,
unavoidable,
unbelievable,
undeniable.

We cannot clone it
or synthesize it.
We cannot test it
or analyse it.

Life cannot be manufactured
or quality controlled.
It conforms to no standard.
It obeys no rules.
To ask its origin
is to speak nonsense,
for it had none.

Death is not the absence of life,
but the loss of structure.
Only forms of life can die -
The essence of life is indestructible.
All that a man can do with life
is to understand the form he takes
and live it.