This I Believe - A Poem

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This I Believe

I believe in logic and reason and fairytales.

I believe that princesses are capable of rescuing themselves,

thank you very much,

and the best princes are the ones who look

like they were raised in a library, not a castle.

I believe that knowledge is the air I breathe but that I would still

be a Gryffindor if my Hogwarts letter ever arrives.

I believe that Thomas Edison was an idiot and a conman, and that

the utter lack of Nikola Tesla in the books we use

to teach our kids about the past is obscene.

I believe in strength comes in different flavors -

Queen Elizabeth I of England was just as fantastic

and daring dangerous as Ching Shih.

Julie d’Aubigny would have been one of Shakespeare’s muses.

I believe in taking lessons from the past but not pretending

that the past is over,

because I believe the past has already happened,

is still happening,

and will happen all our lives -

that time is happening all at once and if we just had a force strong enough,

we could break through and see what really happened

and what’s in store.

But mostly, I believe that history is an unforgiving mistress.

I believe that the quantum theory is correct

and nothing tangible exists until it is observed,

and so the same must be true of the intangible -

of love and trust and human resilience.

I believe that music is the one language that everyone speaks

and that it will never die out.

I believe in a god who doesn’t exist anymore

and a god who only exists when I want her to

and that there will be no pearly gates at the end.

The afterlife is what we decide it to be

and some people don’t want to live again -

they just want to go to sleep

for a long, long time.

I believe that H.P. Lovecraft told it like it is,

that W.B. Yeats was a master wordsmith,

that J.K. Rowling is the cornerstone of my childhood,

and so it must be true that people who go by two initials

have a better sense of the world than most everyone else.

And of course, J.R.R. Tolkien had the good sense to go by three

instead of two, and that’s why he spent time talking to the trees -

because he knew they knew what we did not.

And I believe that this world is a senseless and random

repeating pattern of elaborate nonsense that only makes sense

when looks at in pieces and not as a whole.

And those pieces will never fit together.

I believe in rainy days and rubber boots

and lazy summer afternoons spent sleeping under the bookshelf.

I believe in folk songs mixed with alternative rock, punctuated

every now and again by Bach or jazz or the Beatles,

in ancient mythologies moving alongside detective thrillers.

I believe that if I don’t drink coffee I’ll never grow up,

and in drinking hot tea all year long.

I believe in the possible and impossible,

the probable and the improbable.

I never believed in Santa but always in Peter Pan.

I believe in good TV and bad TV and that

Steven Moffat really needs to leave Doctor Who already.

I believe that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

would hate every single one of us and I hope whoever built his coffin

had enough sense to add in space for the all turning

he’d be doing.

I believe the sunsets really were brighter and the trees taller when I was little.

I believe the sunsets are fiercer and the trees wiser now that I’ve grown some.

I believe that the only thing that smells better than old books

is the interior of a car that’s been sitting out in the sun for hours.

At the end, though, I believe I only believe a lot of things when I have to think about it

and that in general

I just believe in semicolons

and ampersands.