Who am I? I am that place of stillness and love at the center. I am not the careless comments. I am not the expectations and images placed on me. I am not the chatter in my head. I am not the negative feelings or the positive feelings that sway back and forth like seaweed with the high and low tides of the day. I am not the books I have read, the tests I have taken, the degrees I have undertaken. I am not the good poem I wrote or the bad poem I wrote. I am not the stylish clothes people may notice me for sometimes and I am not the reserved, self-absorbed bad-hair-day person people may judge me for at other times. I am not any of those things although I can identify and be identified by them. I am deeper than all of those projections and reflections, as are we all. We are the stillness, presence and love simply being underneath, always, steady, grounding.

Listen

NYC is not the hustle and bustle,
The Honking horns and clamor,
Raised voices across street corners,
Glitz and glamor, skyline, poverty,
No-sleep-heart-beat.
New York is not even
The statue of liberty,
The big apple, the place to be,
Although we identify New York
As all of these things.
What is New York then?
New York, like you and me,
is the serene presence,
steady love, simple stillness,
Underneath that surfaceness.