I AM ME, I AM HERE
By John B. Isom     1972

I am me: I am here, but….
The total me is yet unknown to me.
It is true, I'm here, but not entirely so.

For there is some of me
That trails too far behind,
The me that is here,
To know the meaning
Of the living challenge of the here and now.

Another part of me already stands inside the "future's portal",
holding high the promise of tomorrow's hope for me.

The visible me, present here today, is tiny, very tiny,
When measured by the intangible, weightless me,
The part of me who roams, "as far as thought can reach",
across the vast dimensions,  of the space-time
of my memories and my dreams.

Amino acids, it appears, contain the microscopic mystery of my beginning - a beginning making me akin to everything alive on earth.
Atomically speaking I am a part of all things present, past and future.
Yes, I am in fact, "a child of the universe."

From tiny forms and far beginnings I evolved into a human creature,
By an evolutionary process which defies my comprehension.   

You may see some likeness of me,  In the features of my nearest kin,
But, in the features of a relative three generations old,
my likeness would, no doubt, be hard to see.
Yet, much that is me has been by him foretold.
In fact, collected he, and passed on down to me,       
one eighth of my genetic code.

On looking twenty-generations back, four-hundred years,
I learn my genetic pool has been, in that brief lapse of time, 
arranged a million times anew, by only my parental ancestors.
 
Truly, I am akin, genetically, to all races and clans -
of times past, and of time to come.