There is no such thing as permanence.
To a butterfly, whose span can be measured in hours, the bright blooms are unchanging. Yet we see their petals wither and fall, see their shriveled Winter shape before Spring’s renewal.
I look, and see changeless rocks that have stood sentinel across the centuries, yet in some other span I know my seeing to be as limited as that of the butterfly.
Worlds are born and die in the passing of a cosmic sigh.
Why, then, do we try to make things ‘stay the same’?
What fear binds us to a game
we can never win,
that is lost before we begin?
In my butterfly span, let me drink deep of each bright bloom without fearing Winter’s touch; let me run my fingers over each rock and know the illusion of its changelessness; let me know the common strand that binds my living to rock and flower and let me live that knowing.
(1991)