Like a Man Gone Mad: Poems in a New Century

Going

113 Going For Thomas Wolfe and Heraclitus time was a river flowing differently in place toward the sea. They had a point. A pair of shores divided by ongoing time is all the metaphor we need to show how permanence becomes impermanence until impermanence seems all that’s permanent. If that’s the case, I have to ask if anything’s preservable. Or how? Carthage and Troy are dust. Aquinas ordered on his deathbed that his Summa Theologica be burned “as straw.” Likewise, my wish to see my three grandchildren grown is grudgingly improbable. Why do I long for permanence when permanence is hopeless from the start? I put this question to the river that I’m crossing now by bridge. Insinuating westward to the Mississippi and finally the Gulf, the river says 114 the passing present is already past. That tells me what I must accept but hate to know. I’ve lived this way for years. No matter where I go or when, I’m spanned each day in permanent arrears between two shores and bridging. ...