The Quick Aren’t as Long-Lived as the Dead

It’s all change. They’re all changed.
Each time and each place has grown

Strange, will go strange, and yet
In some ways each now stays the same,

And my thoughts on this head have
Not changed, not much changed.

On my way up the back slopes to fall,
I saw a barred hawk, paused my car

To let a mule deer fawn, left on its own,
Cross a dirt road, flushed a big ram

From the brush oak, watched pink turn gold,
All the things that live, grow, and let go

But aren’t the same as the things in these
Names, names that are ghosts, slow to go.