Poem: and what I am

***

AND WHAT I AM

As with the intemperance and the rain

Of all that comes and goes but

Never comes to blossom and yet

Still takes me up and up

Towards what drives me away, and

Pushes me down while

I climb up towards what

Pushes me down afraid to

Embrace my need to embrace

What I climb up and up

To touch the pushing me down

To know that I am

Completed in the push and pull

Between the always and never of

What I am and

What.

***

These selected fragments are excerpted from unpublished writings by Jack Haas; selections from the notebooks 1990-2005.