Nothing is forever.
Forever comes in thimbles,
hard rocks,
a ray of light loosened from the sun.
Flavors of five oranges,
pillows where the head has risen
and forever looks up in the vacancy,
the concave moon of the softness
a drift of silence.
Nothing is forever,
in the ochre of the dust
along southern roads,
past plantations of misery
with no forgiveness.
The children hold their grudge,
a woman with blackberry eyes
serves pancakes,
and bears the burdens.
But time passes,
and pain wears out,
and nothing,
not even a child’s cough,
the passion of a mother’s devotion,
lasts forever.
Sticks in the ditch
carry fences along the alfalfa fields,
and the green life of a farm
stretches for miles,
time coughs and clears the hour.
As long as it exists,
it returns to the fog of a limpid sea,
but that is forever in the distance.
Now its green thinking,
and dreaming,
and the frost of harvest,
and the furrows of the great wheels
rotating crops.
A flaxen girl walks silently
in the great open field.
She too is momentary,
like the spume of a wave,
sparkling and golden.
Nothing is forever.
Even my sigh,
which is the film
of a great bubble of love,
holding everything
that must last forever.
Holding,
holding,
until my heart must burst,
determined that they last forever.