All Things Change Nothing Stays The Same (Or) , Hello Mr. Whitman Am I Boring You Yet? Poem by Juan Olivarez

All things change, nothing stays the same.
Hair once, auburn, brown, and black,
Turns to silver and white.
Skin as smooth as silk, acquires lines,
Of character, of stress, of worry, of happiness,
Of, life.
Limber joints used to walking, running, bending, carrying weight,
Become immobile and painful to use.

Great forests are hewn down to the ground,
To make room for...what?
For parking lots, for apartment buildings,
Shiny and new,
That with time will become rundown, windows broken,
Paint peeling, walls crumbling, infested by vermin,
With pimps and pushers lurking,
In the shadowed recesses.

The Earth teaches very good lessons,
Spring comes, there are gentle rains,
And thunderheads surround the mountain tops.
Seeds dormant for months, sometimes for years,
Are suddenly Imbued with the very essence of life,
Once dead, and miraculously send roots down, down,
Into the nurturing soil,
And leaves up to the sky of blue,
To welcome the life giving sun..
Water from melting snows in the great mountains,
San Jacinto, and San Gorgonio,
Fill endless streams that criss cross the land.
Wildflowers in myriads of colors cover the ground.
New life is all around.

Then summer starts to step on the heels of spring,
Summer with it's warm breezes, and sudden ferocious thunderstorms.
Summer with abundant green, and rainbows of colors everywhere.
With fluffy clouds floating on the breezes.
With birds singing in the trees,
And the ever present sun in the sky.
And then, a subtle chill fills the air,
Time for change again.

The green leaves turn red and orange,
And gold and and yellow, and start to tumble from the trees,
And to scatter down the streets.
Grey clouds roll in hiding the sun from view,
The chill becomes more pronounced.
Cold drizzle and rain start to fall,
Nothing ever stays the same, all things change.

Now winter is upon the land,
With naked trees shivering in the wind.
The ground is now frozen under a blanket of ice,
And frozen snow.
All you see are steel grey skies, and white mountain tops.
All things change, nothing stays the same.

Even good steel, shiny and strong,
Will turn brown and corrode into dust.
Where would we be now, if not for change?
Running for our lives from dinosaurs,
Or hiding from the great cave bears, or saber toothed cats?
Without change, we would eat our food raw,
And run around naked in the winter time.
Not all change is good, but not all change is bad.

We could do without the great nuclear devices,
That pose such a threat to world destruction.
If the human race were to destroy the Earth,
As we know it,
If life as we know it would cease to exist because of man's destructive nature,
The Earth would still be here,
The Earth would still exist, we cannot destroy the Earth.
Everything changes, nothing stays the same.
We are capable of destroying ourselves,
But we cannot permanently hurt the Earth.
After we are gone, after we are long forgotten,
A mere tick of the clock in eternity,
Lets say four or five hundred years,
Really no time at all in geological terms,
The Earth would be clean and whole,
And green and full of life once again.
Why?
Because all of man's poisons, and bombs, and chemicals,
And pesticides, are nothing to the Earth.
Everything changes nothing stays the same.
We think in terms of destroying the Earth,
And us as the victims.
With us as the losers, because of own misdeeds.
That is actually right, but in another sense,
We would lose anyway, because we are as nothing,
Compared to the power of the cosmos,
Of which our Earth is a part.
We are a grain of very fine sand,
One grain, in all the beaches in the world.
And remember, there are more stars in the universe,
Than there are grains of sand on all the beaches,
In all the world.
But I doubt you can comprehend this,
Everything changes, nothing stays the same.

Everyday is a metamorphosis in our lives,
We just cannot see it with our human eyes,
Or our limited mental capabilities.
Everything changes, nothing stays the same.
Time marches on, and it will still be marching,
After we all are gone.
Time, our concept of time,
A clock on the wall, a watch on your wrist,
An hour glass constantly dripping grains of sand.
The sands of time, always shifting, always moving.
Nothing stays the same, everything changes.
Time is the greatest illusion of all.
To God, there is no such thing as time.
It is a manmade concept.

The world constantly changes around us,
Slowly shifting into other dimensions.
We just can't comprehend this.
What we call the past, is actually a separate dimension,
Where everything you once knew,
Is still fresh and new, like that first day you saw it.
Like your old pocket knife, that you found buried in the backyard.
Covered in dirt and rust, it was now worthless.
But in that other dimension, it is shiny and new,
In you pocket, and you are still young and strong.
But you see my friend,
Everything changes, nothing stays the same.

Our lives are really dreams,
And when we die, we actually awake.
That day everything will be made clear.
Everything changes, nothing stays the same.
A very wise man once said,
'To live is to dream, to die is to awaken, '
Whether you choose to believe this or not,
Do one thing.
Sit under the stars one night, and you might think,
The stars are constant, they never change,
They are always the same.
You could not be more wrong.
The stars in the heavens die too.
But their lives are as immortality to us mere mortals.
Because everything changes, nothing stays the same,
Though you might not see it, or understand it.

You must think with your heart and with your immortal soul,
To even begin to comprehend the magical world,
Of the cosmos.
Your brain is biased, and restricted to realism.
Your mind is infected and contaminated by man,
And all his theories
Your mind is only in first gear.It is like an eighteen wheeler,
Trying to to stay on schedule,
On a highway posted at seventy five,
But having a governor adjusted to fifty five.
Remove the governor from your mind,
By thinking with your soul.
Everything changes, nothing stays the same.

You might hear on the news, that a mass murderer,
Was given five consecutive life sentences.
And in your mind you think,
'That is such a long, long time.'
But is it really?
You might hear on the news that Japan's damaged nuclear reactor,
Will take forty years to clean up,
Before the land is free from radiation again.
And in your mind you think,
'That is such a long, long time.'
But is it really?
You are thinking in terms, of the great illusion,
Time, as humans have made it.
Remember there is no such thing as time.
Only dimensions, countless dimensions that we travel through,
Every second, every minute, every hour, every day,
Every week, every month, every year, every century,
Every millennium, every eon.
Do you see what I mean by a man made illusion?
Everything changes nothing stays the same

To make this a worthy tribute,
To 'The Homer Of America'
I must suddenly and inadvertently end this piece,
And land this hot air balloon.
Damn that was boring.

12/31/11 Alton Texas Happy New Year Everyone.