Why am I?

A coast line
where sea and shore
engage in a never-
ending dialog
of silence and sound.

Who sees such things?
The man or woman
who has eyes to see.

Who hears such words?
The person who has ears
to hear and a heart
with which to feel.

And who am I,
this old man walking
life’s sands at the tide’s
foaming edge?

With a clarity of vision
that morphs light into shadow,
and then back out again,
would you tell me, please,
who, and why, I am.

“The chorus of the ocean, the silence of stone.”
John O’Donohue, Anam Cara, p. 78.