Flux You, Heraclitus

Life is flux. —Heraclitus of Ephesus
Everything passes and everything changes —Bob Dylan

—for B. M.

another lifelong friend has died. Sunday
part of me again vanished too—
young men together
we built things— homes,
carpenters in sync we drove spikes
through joists, hammered steel to steel
psyched by our strength and cleverness;
once you exclaimed, laughing when the wind came up
and snatched a sheet of ply from our grips,
“Flux you, Heraclitus!” ……… Now here
the philosopher’s great truth is breath—
words that slip through lips
and I want to run my car, windows wide,
down the narrow, sloped canyon
of Main again, in slow roll in low,
a greenhorn coasting like a hawk on thermals,
hearing its muffler echo, hearing its stutter
bounce off the stone façade of 1^st National
and plate glass storefronts
shattering silence in the dark,
making noises louder than
mere mutter

Jim Culleny
11/16/20