Quest for Identity

The following prose poem by C.K. Garabed won First Prize in the 2021 US Military Veterans' Annual Creative Arts Contest for the State of NJ in the Creative Writing Category for Non-Rhyming Poetry.

Quest for Identity

By C.K. Garabed (Charles Kasbarian)

Who am I?

I have a name, but that’s not me.

My identity is a secret.

Is there anything in the Universe that really knows me?

A rock, a tree, a river?

Nature is my mother,

But she seems to know as little about me as I know about her.

What am I?

A product of evolution?

Something made up of chemicals, fortuitously combined?

An animal that urinates, defecates, and copulates?

Or a shadow that has no real substance?

A dream that walks and talks?

A figment of nature’s imagination?

Or a spirit, ineffable and transient?

When am I me?

When I am awake and can see, hear, taste and feel?

Or when I am asleep, and can dream the unimaginable?

When in the embrace of solitude?

Or in the midst of teeming life?

Where am I me?

On top of the mountain? Or in the valley?

On land? On the sea? In the desert?

Or in the bosom of my family and friends?

From where did I come?

And to where am I going?

How did I get to be me?

A natural product of my parents?

A predestined entity magically conjured up by fate?

The entity I call me is never the same.

It changes with time.

When it stops, is that the final me?

Why am I me?

A bridge between the past and the future?

A martyr to Destiny?

Or a mere pebble meant to be lost in a vast sandy shore?

Why am I not you, and you me?

I am faced with the immemorial problem of Identity.

Contrary to what the evolutionists believe,

The answer lies not in the past but in the future.