Whatever It Is, It’s Always There

In some sense, the past
Is eternal. It’s not
Unchanging.

Change comes slowly
To stone and tombs but
Inevitably,

Yet the past stays past.
It doesn’t become
The future again.

The past stays present.
There’s always the past.
So it’s eternal

Like that—ancestors
And extinct species
Belong to something

Always there, even
As ancestral names
And fossils vanish.

The past is present,
Is always with us.
There’s always a past.

The day moves that way,
Each day, something glimpsed
As it’s vanishing

Into forever,
Into the city
Of never return,

The way deer and bears,
Not small in themselves,
Only need a step

Into a forest
To vanish for good.
Look up and they’re gone.

The past was before
They appeared. The past
Remains where they’ve gone.