{"id":2503,"date":"2006-03-22T19:54:12","date_gmt":"2006-03-23T02:54:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/?p=2503"},"modified":"2026-01-21T16:44:18","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T00:44:18","slug":"impermanence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/2006\/03\/22\/impermanence\/","title":{"rendered":"Impermanence"},"content":{"rendered":"

Impermanence<\/strong><\/p>\n

A dead man’s photo peers over my bed
\nThe silent witness who lives in my blood.
\nAbsence is the soul’s starvation diet.
\nI have been hungry since before I was born.<\/p>\n

Plan for madness to heal you.
\nPlan for sadness to fly.
\nPlan for hope estranging your happiness.
\nIt surely will.<\/p>\n

The finite hours and days,
\nThe years,
\nDissolve with relentless measure
\nAnd apathy.<\/p>\n

This will grieve your heart but release it.
\nYou must not pull back: too late too late to stop.
\nYou carelessly left your spirit alone,
\nNow seconds plunder its secrets<\/p>\n

And take all.
\nLife perpetuates a feeble trick
\non the frail mind:
\nA creation of memes
\nMoved by predestination<\/p>\n

To obscurity.
\nThe clock lightly ticks and then cocks its gun.
\nAims between your eyes.
\nAre you ready?<\/p>\n

—
\nI found this poem a nasty<\/strike> wrenching process. I was using James Galvin’s Post-Modernism<\/a> as the scaffold. It was an abstract poem, slippery. I seem to be focused on mortality of late. I don’t set out to write it. It’s just what comes out. But this one felt like harder than most. Words tested, words discarded. I tried to follow the syllable and word structure of each line. I succeeded except for the first stanza and the last two lines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Impermanence A dead man’s photo peers over my bed The silent witness who lives in my blood. Absence is the soul’s starvation diet. I have been hungry since before I was born. Plan for madness to heal you. Plan for sadness to fly. Plan for hope estranging your happiness. It surely will. The finite hours […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[218,28,16,215],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aenigmas","category-humanities","category-nature","category-poetry"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2503"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10329,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2503\/revisions\/10329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}