the blueshift journal

There’s small comfort in the infinite

 

sameness of change—the river,

 

down from where our steps lead

 

through rafts of jewelweed, is passively

 

indifferent to every sadness we bring

 

to it; the flat, dull weight of each stone

 

we toss or skim across its surface

 

it swallows in the same way a star

 

ingests a comet: morsel of little moment,

 

how easily it disappears. Heraclitus

 

knew but half of it: not how the past swarms,

 

iridescing, when a man can surrender

 

to these immersions—how he dissolves

 

awhile, swept in its flow, glint and swirl—

 

and emerge to climb the stairs again, rank

 

with the not-same scent of the same river.