Identity’s Journey

It came from long ago.

Galactic dust swirled in wait,

Servile to spawning’s many ways

As the steller winds of time

Swirled the initiate’s arcana,

Gravity’s reach at the ready.

How long the wait?

How far the grounding?

When might the enigmatic become explicable?

Creation found purchase.

A growing of the essence

Gave expanding girth to the mother,

Anxiety for the father,

Warmth and health to a minuscule start.

The journey continued…

Birth brought on a name.

An imposed identity began.

Growth ensued.

A baby became a toddler,

Became an infant,

Became a child,

Became adolescent,

Became a questioner.

Four walls of his bedroom

Volunteered momentary protection,

Freedom of his incessant self-interrogation.

Think time.

Answer time.

Waiting time.

Who am I really?

Am I just another Bob?

When comes true identity?

How will I know?

Why do I feel of no purpose?

Wars expanded.

Recruitment grew.

Induction proved unavoidable.

Battlefield fatigue brought on more aloneness.

Bob was still just Private Bob

Then…

A war torn village brought Bob into survival mode.

He took cover in a cottage,

Heard sounds of a woman in pain.

Found her suffering the oncoming birth of  a child.

A panicking Private Bob gave clumsy and untrained assistance

In delivering the wailing child.

The soldier held the tiny girl,

Her umbilical cord still attached.

He severed the chord with the first use of his M9 Bayonet

And wept along with child and mother.

As time gathered…

Private Bob was stamped with the nickname Doc

And started feeling different,

Felt less alone,

Felt more with purpose,

Just not clear as to what purpose.

After serving his thirty-six months,

The GI Post 9/11 Bill provided him with college,

Ultimately gaining a scholarship in medical school.

Private Bob, now Dr. Robert Donally - Pediatrician,

Found identity through the fog of war,

And to this day when in delivery mode,

Wears his lapel bin of a sheathed bayonet.

Identity’s journey now treading on a new landscape

Where change is often an addition to a family,

Bob was with further evidence that

Identity’s journey has no end,

Only beginnings.