Everything passes and everything changes,
just do what you think you should do
…………………………………….… —Bob Dylan
Flux You, Heraclitus!
…. —for Brian
Another lifelong friend has died
Sunday
part of me again has vanished too
We were young together building things, partners,
carpenters in sync we drove spikes through joists
hammering steel to steel. You once exclaimed,
laughing when a shifty wind came up
snatching a sheet of ply from grips,
“Flux you, Heraclitus!”
………………………..……… and here
that philosopher’s hard truth is word
slipping through my lips
Now I want to run my car
down the narrow sloped cleft of Main again,
windows open wide, slow roll in low
coasting as a hawk on thermals might,
to hear it’s muffler throb, hear its stutter
bouncing off stone façades
and plate glass storefronts,
shattering silence in the dark,
racket-making louder than
mere mutter
Jim Culleny
11/16/20