The Shade Tree

Each particular person,
Every societal wave
Undergoes continuous

Change. So everyone alters
And everyone fades away,
Every idea and nation,

Not just from mortality
Per se, just from becoming
At every moment other

Than at the moment before,
Until what was was estranged,
An alien to what is.

The process is mostly slow.
Change is so full of the same.
Yesterday, you were dying,

And the world was burning up
As you hid under a tree
To get some shade from the heat,

While today, you’re still dying,
And the world’s still burning up
As you sit under the same

Shade tree to wait out more heat.
But today it’s not the same.
Same’s somehow never the same.

Your particular person,
Your temporary standing
Wave collapses in the shade.