This month, I'm hoping to post a few times with thing's I've written in the past. Today I'm going to post something I'm sure a lot of you I've known for a while have seen. I wrote it a year and a half ago and am still quite proud of it.
As you read me, I must wonder – Am I an essay, or am I a poem? Looking upon myself, it seems I am simply an essay. My simple words, basic components of a larger work, form sentences in a simple prose and organize themselves as paragraphs do, with each larger part connecting the rest and serving the whole. I have not stanza nor meter nor rhyme, and as I reason with myself, as a scholar with his companions, I present reasoning to reach a conclusion, regardless of whether I find it.
However, upon a second look, I wonder if I am a poem. Though prose, my words have been carefully chosen, designed beautifully and artistically to fulfill my purpose. I convey and contain as much emotion as information and intelligence. My pattern, my style, my tone – they are neither academic nor professional, and they often contradict themselves. I may lack the meter and rhythm of the great poets of the past, but did even they always use rhyme and rhythm? Perhaps I am no more flawed than they. Perhaps my paragraphs are stanzas; perhaps my sentences lines.
Whatever I am, and whatever my purpose, it seems I am only here for the sake of my author. I do not understand why parts of myself exist, and I often feel weaker because I lack the beauty of other works, but I trust my author. I trust that he has a plan for me, and that I can do credit to his purposes. I was made to do what he intended, though I may not always know what it is. Perhaps I am not an essay, and perhaps I am not a poem. Created to fulfill a purpose I do not completely understand, and to bring credit and praise to my creator, perhaps I am merely a human.
Let me know what you think.
-Caleb
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