I’m Yours

Original words copyright © 2001 by Gracie Jordan
Additional words and music Creative Commons License 2001 by Jim Bearden

This began as a poem entitled “Swim in Me”, by Gracie Jordan, a 6th-grader at the Nueva School, which I saw in the San Jose Mercury News because it had won a student poetry contest. It seemed to me to be a poem which might “sing” well, and I was able to revise it into the chorus for this song. The poem’s last line was (as it is in the chorus here) “Swim in me– I’m yours,” and I thought the last part of that line made a more appropriate title than the first part, so that’s what it became. I then added the details in the verses and the bridge, making some points (I hope) about what is probably the most important and valuable — and possibly, most abused — substance on our planet.

Verse 1:
I make up most of your body;
I cover most of the earth.
Without me, you’d never be here to greet me,
For it was I who gave all life birth.
So why do you fill me with poisons?
Why do you dam up my flood?
Why can’t you go with my life-giving flow?
For I am your own life’s blood.

Chorus:
Swim in me – I’m yours.
My springs, my streams, my creeks all are yours.
My lakes, my rivers, my waterfalls, my rainbows…
Swim in me – I’m yours.

Verse 2:         
You might see me, trapped in a faucet;
You might see me, confined by a dam;
But if you can’t see how much more I can be,
Then you’ll never know who I am.
So come, enjoy me, in all of my beauty,
And the bounty of life that I give.
Come out and see me, where I flow, wild and free,
Come feel what it’s like to really live.

Chorus

Bridge:
How much can a man profit
If he gains the whole world, but loses his soul?
Why can’t you see the folly of killing me
For a few grains of silver and gold?

Chorus

End:         
Swim in me: I am you.

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