a simple question

Seven decades in, when asked to peer inside
and ruminate about my being
with the phrase Who am I?
I peel away who I have been to others:
“Pops” to the grandkids,
“Oh Danny,” to my dear bride.
Then proudly offer up the legacy of my profession—
 all aligned to Tikkun Olam—
and gleefully describe the joys I’ve taken up in my dotage:
 capturing sacred feelings in words,
 the world’s beauty in what once was film,
 now rendered in zeros and ones.
When I have stripped all this away,
what remains is the journey I have taken up
since she left to join the others:
the journey along the Eightfold Path,
with signposts of the Four Noble Truths.
And the answer to the question
appears to me as if I had just awoken from a dream.
My soul, for this moment, is awash in the river of human experience—
and as the current sweeps us past the lotus flowers
unfolding in the morning sun,
through the white-water rapids, crashing down the heights of a waterfall,
and along the rock-strewn banks of daily life,
I know that soon—not too soon, but soon enough—
this soul within will once again join
the ocean of infinite souls.
So when asked Who am I, the answer is:
I am becoming.