New poem: "Why Am I Me?"

 “Why Am I Me?”

 

Ernest “Papa” Hemingway was my favorite

writer, until I read John Hoyer Updike;

his lyrical prose made Heminway’s feel wanting,

and I never read him the same way again.

But it was more, so much more that pulled

me into the inimitable genius of Updike’s writing;

and when it dawned on me that he ferreted out

the sacred way of life in the “beautiful mundane”

of every one of his 140 stories published in the New

Yorker, and the rest elsewhere, exploring family,

marriage, infidelity, mortality, faith, and every little

experience, however mundane, that opened up

the sacred way of life that brought him a little closer

to the answer he was looking for, my heart went

out to him; but my heart also cried for him

when he realized that his talent was insufficient

to mine the spiritual gold that he needed to answer

the crucial question of his life, “Why am I me?”

And John Hoyer Updike, “America’s most distinguished

man of letters” and my favorite writer, died 85%

satisfied in his literary accomplishments,

but spiritually unrequited.

 

Composed in Tiny Beaches,

Georgian Bay, Southcentral, Ontario

Wednesday, January 29, 2025