What Passes By, What Lingers, What Changes Irrevocably

[Image: “North Florida Skyline With Crow + Shadow,” by John E. Simpson. (Shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page at RAMH.)]

From whiskey river:

In View of the Fact

The people of my time are passing away: my
wife is baking for a funeral, a 60-year-old who

died suddenly, when the phone rings, and it’s
Ruth we care so much about in intensive care:

it was once weddings that came so thick and
fast, and then, first babies, such a hullabaloo:

now, it’s this that and the other and somebody
else gone or on the brink: well, we never

thought we would live forever (although we did)
and now it looks like we won’t: some of us

are losing a leg to diabetes, some don’t know
what they went downstairs for, some know that

a hired watchful person is around, some like
to touch the cane tip into something steady,

so nice: we have already lost so many,
brushed the loss of ourselves ourselves: our

address books for so long a slow scramble now
are palimpsests, scribbles and scratches: our

index cards for Christmases, birthdays,
Halloweens drop clean away into sympathies:

at the same time we are getting used to so
many leaving, we are hanging on with a grip

to the ones left: we are not giving up on the
congestive heart failure or brain tumors, on

the nice old men left in empty houses or on
the widows who decide to travel a lot: we

think the sun may shine someday when we’ll
drink wine together and think of what used to

be: until we die we will remember every
single thing, recall every word, love every

loss: then we will, as we must, leave it to
others to love, love that can grow brighter

and deeper till the very end, gaining strength
and getting more precious all the way….

(A. R. Ammons [source])

…and:

I would say that there exist a thousand unbreakable links between each of us and everything else, and that our dignity and our chances are one. The farthest star and the mud at our feet are a family; and there is no decency or sense in honoring one thing, or a few things, and then closing the list. The pine tree, the leopard, the Platte River, and ourselves—we are at risk together, or we are on our way to a sustainable world together. We are each other’s destiny.

(Mary Oliver [source])

Not from whiskey river:

Crane Dance
(excerpt)

Well, things change: new passions, new threats, new fears.   
New consequences, too. Nowadays, we don’t think much   
about Theseus, the Minotaur, Ariadne on the beach   
at Naxos, staring out at the coming years.   
But people still dance that dance: just common folk,   
those criss-cross steps that no one had to teach,   
at weddings and wakes, in bars or parks,   
as if hope and heart could meet, as if they might   
even now, somehow, dance themselves out of the dark.

(Yannis Ritsos, translasted by David Harsent [source])

…and:

A Citizen

I wanted to be seen. But who would see me? I couldn’t
think of the name for anything but a flower. The government
makes coins that size and shape so your hand can feel
safe holding them. The pictures stamped remind
us where we are, or how the landscape
we live in connects itself, through common value,
to a different place. On this one, a spinnaker
sails past a bridge. On that, a diamond shines like a child’s
stilled top over a bird, as if the diamond made the natural
world?— bird, forest, state flower, sheaf of healthy corn, shining
water?— out of proportion in relation to itself. I love this. My own state
has a bear, so small and out of proportion to me that my life-
line can cross behind it. At last I do not fear
that but feel proud the animal can sit in my palm so silently
until I spend it. And if I lose it, then it becomes
even more quiet. Most still just have an eagle,
so it is as if 30 eagles were passed over
from one hand to another when the one
charged with arranging things for his Savior’s dinner
arranged his Savior’s death. Heavier the yoke
of heat in solitude. A walk uphill does not
feel manageable. Who will see me?

(Katie Peterson [source])

…and:

“I can tell you this, Wayne Wace…” [The psychic reader] closed her eyes, briefly. When she opened them and began to speak, she didn’t seem to be looking at Wayne or anything else — which wasn’t (he reminded himself) quite the same thing as not seeing anything.

“Things are coming to pass,” she went on. “Destructive things, but also wonderful things — literally wonderful: things full of wonder. Remember that wonders need not all be nice, Wayne. Some can be quite terrible. A dark comet colliding with the Earth is as much a wonder as a brilliant one passing in the night sky, hundreds of thousands of miles distant.

“But things, yes, wonders long in the making are coming to pass.

“At the heart of these things coming to pass, it would seem, stands a woman — perhaps more than one woman. Each woman a fulcrum, you see? A hinge about which a particular problem can be seen to swing.”

She closed her eyes but continued to speak, as though hypnagogically.

“She — or you, under her influence — must find an unexpected opening and cut into and through the problem. The woman will not be easily pleased. She may not accept at first what you are trying to accomplish, or how. You must not let her decide for you — the fulcrum, you see? she is not the lever itself — but you must attend to her. To get to the wonder, you see?”

(JES, Seems to Fit)