To preserve the perennial

We fight not to be fixed—
not to be some thing to someone.
We want to preserve the perennial
and peacefully mourn the ephemeral pretty
for the sake of seasons and cycles.
Other flowers will console
and rain drops to the same soil.
Seeds will scatter when our concrete explodes
and something new will grow.

For all our softness, we are impermeable--
numb only to numbness.
Quick violence razes careful buildings,
but a steady neglect decays deeper.

I wish we had imagi-
nations—to pretend we are not pretending
that uttering a word erases itself.

Clouds and moons we can create.
I will hold my own--keep shadows
of fondness on my drawing board
and cut the nervous out.

I still have time to become an astronaut
and learn not to worry about the bomb
but things like cabin pressure
or my distance from the earth without dying—
adapting to claustrophobic life
behind the glass to vastness. It will trouble me
not to recognize my own face in a bowl,
my body-obscuring suit, but I will not feel
susceptible to cancer nor be concerned
with conditions of the heart. It will be elsewhere—
compacted and new.
Some things will be the same,
like fighting artificial air.