Red Butte Gardens, 18 January 2018

It’s the scenes that change the slightest
Most bewitch us. A few atoms, sure,
Of the bench body occupied this afternoon
Had fled, the wood likely stained, sanded,
And stained again more than once since
Last time this bundle of blood, bones,
And earth-moving memories sat there,
But it might as well be called the same,
So self-similar as to serve as its own
Temporal doppelgänger, bench and body
Both, the twin apartment towers the same
From which body once walked once weekly
To this same exact spot, the city the same,
At least from up here, the paths unchanged,
Years of diligent maintenance keeping
The corruptions of sun and season at bay.
It was hallucinatory to return after years
Away. It’s always hallucinatory to return,
And that’s because it’s just that: hallucination.
So ran the usual sermon in the woolly head,
And it was right, as far as it went, but
It didn’t went far enough. That change
Continues constantly in everything, no
Matter how sliced thin, is so true it should be
A truism, but what is similarity, then,
What things within the same old scene remained
To make it so nearly the same? From change
To change, not everything has changed, or
If everything has changed, then some things
Have changed less, and what is it then of them
That has not changed? We seek out stillness,
But stillness there is none. Neither is there
Any absolute transformation. Dice the scene
However slightly, every slice will show a change
And yet somehow something of each slice
And of the whole remains the same, or there
Would be no similarity. What is that sameness
That carries changes with it everywhere,
In every microscopic pore, without being
Totally changed? Body mused and wondered
As the floating moan of a freight train rose
Over the steady, distant hum of roads
And the querulous signaling of songbirds hidden
In the drab leaves and straw of a mild winter.
The last time here, body recalled, it was
Spring and snowing. It was years ago and this
Body had just been widowed. So that was
Something different, but something bewitched
Whatever inhered in the remains. A voice
From the path asked a silent companion,
“Has your mother ever lied to you in anything
She meant? Then why start thinking she would?”
Indeed. Why start thinking? What has changed?