Pipe Twilight, Caliente, Nevada, 13 January 2018

Oscillations permit the creation of time.
Cataclysmic cascades destroy oscillations.
The old oscillations vanish away forever.
New oscillations emerge from nonexistence.
These exchanges of kinds of change remain
Mysterious. This necessity for exchanging
Change remains insoluble. Dispensations,
The regimes of certain types of exchange,
Are exchanged for fresh dispensations. How
Is a dispensation of oscillating exchanges
Exchanged? Why is every kind of exchange
Replaced by a new kind of exchange? What
Are exchanges among all kinds of change?
In the gathering dark, the routine oscillation
Of an evening in the depths of desert winter,
Another familiar oscillation, familiar season,
A traveler lit a pipe for the first time in years,
Breathing through burning leaves, and knew
That the brief return of this old tradition
Signaled the end of the newer dispensation.
Ghosts only return to signal new ghosts
Are about to be made, new exchanges
Are about to begin, following the unseen
Cataclysmic cascade that has no reasons,
No maker, is not part of the season, leaving
Fresh worlds and new seasonal oscillations
In its wake. The wind pushed the dry leaves
From the few canyon trees over the feet
Of the traveler in search of a new exchange,
Sensing in this ordinary, remote evening
Nothing remotely ordinary about the coming
Change. Knock out the ashes. Not the gods,
Not the ghosts, not the probabilists, not
The priests nor the prophets know the need
Of change to resist completion, to exchange.