Poem Of The Week: I Am That I Am … Without End

This week on Poem Of The Week I would like to introduce Texas Southern and The University of the West Indies graduate Millard Lowe. Well known as a former Senior Lecturer in Science and African and Caribbean Social Studies at the Sam Sharpe Teachers College in St. James, Jamaica and teaching Science in Los Angeles, California for Junior High School and High School scholars. As for his poem I Am That I Am, it has taken a different route from the former Poem Of The week candidates. Being that the climate of today still remains, I personally felt that with this week we should step away from the means of the consistent hostility that we face and bring more of a spiritual realm to life. His poem states:

Listen, my heart is a soul drum Beating the spiritual rhythms Of the sojourning struggle of life— Pumping pulsating blood inking The notes of our story—flowing From the past to the present—banked In the here and now—waiting to cascade Into the liberated future; Yes, like an aged tree trunk, I am rooted Here—anchored in the fertile soils— Here, engaged in the struggles of freeing life. Oh, the scars I bear are many; each being A keloid memory of where I have been—each A smooth raised and shadowed spiritual hope Of where I am going when finished inking here. Today, I now know that I am a child Of a once lost race that is now found And realized; a race destined to be forever free. Oh, I know that I am a child of the rivers Of blood—rivers fearlessly flowing free; You see, I am as the night—pushing aside The day—claiming my time now to be here, free. Yesterday is gone and tomorrow may not be; Thus, today must be the joyous freedom advent. Therefore, today I claim myself eternally free; I am as in the beginning: wind, water, fire— The light! I am all: I am the Word without end!