THE BIG QUESTIONS, 9: CHANGES (PROBLEMS OF CONSTANCY AND CHAOS)

This is Poem #9 in my series of poem responses to the Big Questions posed by philosophers, scientists, and village cranks, to celebrate National Poetry Month (NaPoMo, April 2013) Why are things in constant flux? Why do times change and we with them? Everything is relative then? Relative to what? Are you here or are you there? As Blackburn asks: why do things keep on keeping on? Is Eternity in another life a myth? A placebo? Another world? Why struggle then for Eternity?

 

 

 

 

CHANGES

O, the times a-changin’…Times change, an’ we change with them!

Changes, as constant as they are intriguing,

slither through as coldly as serpents move
into crevices not unlike meandering fog.

Inexorable patterns, they are the unchanging

streams running through the cherished fables
we tell and retell until they become a reality

we cannot escape however sanguinely we try

to build walls to ward them off chambers
of fear housing our hapless lives. Hopeless.

Every sunrise fades into a sundown, all lives

dwindle with discarded days, anguish turns
into ecstasy and loops around like a storm.

What grows in spring withers in summer,

then, like twigs blown off in autumn’s fall,
get buried in winter frost, a carrion of a year.

Why struggle then for eternity? Nothing lasts.

That story about a lost paradise is still grit
for an unchanging story once upon a time.

Could changes have been that fruit in Eden?

An apple stuck in his throat, it bobs forever
like an intruding promise that everything

must perish even in paradise. The rot here

then is forever. Flotsam of ruined homes,
debris of broken lives, all tombs of betrayal.

Would a morning ever come, as we sip tea,

when like a wave laving the shore, it ebbs
only to crawl back at all sunrises and sunsets,
never ceasing, never leaving, never changing?

---ALBERT B CASUGA