Breezily Permanent Past

Goldfinches in the junipers,
Hummingbirds in the wildflowers,
A human in the parking lot

Talking past the goldfinch chatter
Into a glassy phone in hand—
The wind winds around all of this

And everything within hearing,
A rearrangement trivial
Enough to recreate the past

As a different past, a new
Past, one in which some branches twitched
And that was their fate for this day—

Just like that, the whole world remade,
Reformed with every tiny sway,
Every wavering in the air,

And here’s your true eternity,
What has just happened has happened
And will have happened forever,

However trivial the change
Of goldfinch calls in junipers
And human talk in parking lots.