The Problem of Change

“Change is an illusion.”

                                                —Parmenides of Elea, 475 BCE

 

 

I am ready

I am not yet ready.

 

It is time

It is not yet time.

 

So I spend my days

bound in quandary

 

match in one hand,

flint in another

 

afraid, afraid.

 

The ancients argued

that what is can never not be

 

that we misunderstand death

mistake it for absence and mourn

 

but the wave that appears

to wash away your prints

 

leaves the sand as it always was

and you, as ever, shall remain

 

afraid, afraid.