Writ in Water

How would I sing a song of myself? A poem, perhaps, read instead of sung? Could work. If I did have a poem to recite, it would most likely go like this:

If my name was writ in the fallen rain
And nowhere else
I ask, would you remember still?
The endless stars of this summer sky linger above and shiver
They cast pale light through the last of these nights
Because we are leaving this place, you and I, forever.

To you I may become less than a memory
Cease to exist but in the synapse of a mind
Who I am will become less important, then
Than who I was when you saw me last

Yes, a poem, that could do it. But what else? A poem seems so passé, so expected, and I am no John Keats. I have no true way with words. If my name was writ in water, I fear it would simply wash away. An interpretive dance maybe? No, I’m no dancer. I should have brought a powerpoint presentation. Musical stylings? No, I forgot my violin. Then how can one sing the song of himself? Is there even such a thing? Who am I? It’s the kind of question for which the skeleton of an answer must already be in place for its inquisition to lead anywhere productive. I have no skeletons of answers, not yet. Because I think that who we are, who we are at our cores, depends not upon self assessment, but upon the thoughts of those we influence.

In the beginning, I say only that I am a doctor. The young child whose arm I reinsert into its socket calls me a superhero. The middle aged woman whose baby I deliver says I’m a saint. The elderly man whose disease I rub away calls me to his bedside and thanks me for saving his life. So what am I? A superhero? A saint? A lifesaver? I’m certainly not just a doctor anymore, at least, not to the world in which I live, and no man exists in a vacuum.

And I didn’t want to make a flashy song of myself, because that’s certainly not who I am, so I decided to settle on the passé, expected poem to explain just what it is that I’m saying.

My song of myself is the song you sing
It is the song you will sing when I am dead and gone
And cannot sing for myself, cannot even think
Of life, of myself, of you
It is the song you will sing when you run into me
at the corner café as you order a tall chai and I turn around perhaps noticing you, perhaps not, perhaps saying hello, perhaps not, perhaps talking about my job, how it’s going, how the wife and children are doing, about your job, about your spouse and children, about the tall chai in my hand and how it’s quite good, better than I expected, better than you expected, better than we all expected, but not good enough. For a moment we’ll exchange a soft goodbye, shallow smiles, and I shall become less than a memory again.
And perhaps walking down the street you’ll sing my song, but it will be quite boring and droll.
The song of myself is the song you will sing when you hold my hand at the hospital bed and cry with me for the time will have come to say goodbye a final time.

And let me say as an aside
That I’m not fond of saying goodbye
And so I wouldn’t, but please know this
That with every breath and every glimpse
With every touch and whisper of your name
I love you more than life itself
And will end it quietly
With your hand in mine

I should hope, in that hospital bed, that you would sing some sort of song. And I hope it would be a beautiful song, a song of love, a song of life, song of myself.
And I’ll end it here save for a few last lines. I’ll leave it incomplete, rough around the edges, with very little revision, because at 17 years in, I’d have to say, my song of myself has hardly started. And true to this fashion, I’ll end with a snippet of a poem I’m still working on.

Watch for me in the water and the wind
In a whisper I may return to see you again
And if you forget, know that I shall not forget
But if you remember
And in some distant place find use of my memory
Then the hands of time shall forever know
That my name was neither writ in water nor stone
But in the hearts of men, and thus became immortal.