“What am I like”? my question asks of those who know me well.
Is what you see what I’ve always been? Is that what time doth tell?
When I was a child were you there with me to learn the things I learned?
If not, then why do I ask of thee to say what you’ve discerned?

When I was a teen perhaps you met and knew me in my youth,
and now you can see if my dreams and plans have led me to my truth.
A young married man in new fatherhood — did you meet me first that way?
When soberness built a fence around the path that before me lay.

A father of children like I’d been was next on the carousel.
Did you know me then when memories of my childhood served me well?
Perhaps we met when my fathering days were spent in labor with teens,
When remembering helped and hindered my role in perceiving what it means

to live in the sixties and not in the eighties — a contrast oh, so great
yet much of my youth — recalled anew– came forth to help relate.
In the middle of life I find myself with askings and replies
so “What Am I Like? What have I become” confronts my inner eyes.

Whatever it was I wanted then when fantasy filled my world,
is now not just a might have been but around me gently curled,
the grown-up manifestation of an acorn now grown tall
with branches broad and leaves of green — an oak amidst the All.