All Things Pass

      Will it always be like this? her daughters ask
in the throes of a visitation from their own despair.
      She doesn't feel like she's lying when she says no—  
didn't Heraclitus say all things pass and nothing stays?

     "A visitation" sounds like a fleeting thing, though  
like bad news it might land with a thud on the roof.
     Heraclitus said all things pass and nothing stays— 
they swirl with the current and the current flows.

     The world's bad news lands with a thud on the roof—
black-suited company of crows, shadows warping the view.
     They swirl with the current and the current flows. 
What does the moon portend? Do stars bristle with knives?

     Morbid company, drab-suited couriers of the shadowy  
view: don't you tire of their gloomy spreadsheets?    
     The moon rises in the sky and stars speckle with light. 
Their river's dark indigo. They don't stay still either.

     She wants to shred and ball up these sheets of gloom;
she's not lying. Nothing might stop, but we won't stop.    
     The sky's dark indigo river goes on and on—
Why should anything always be the way it is?