Nothing Ever Changes

Image: M4rcel01966 @ Pixabay

Frog-legged. 
Pigeon chested.
Hair pressed down,
A spit-licked crown.
Your regiment of solemn
Forlorn uniforms
And yours the 
saddest face of all. 

Did you know then,
Before your fall,
Despite your daily labour 
Just how cruel 
Those binds would be? 
No matter all the sights 
You’d see and loves you’d win.
Or over time would fade?

Nothing ever changes.
Those uncertain eyes
In hazy grain you’d 
Forever keep. That others 
Would also reap in time. 
And all that heavy lifting,
Sifting papers through
Industrious late night parleys.

Or sucking cigars 
At gin-soaked parties
Laughing, darting, 
Long-held, claret lunches, 
Would nonetheless
Unimpress
The Fates. 
For nothing ever changes. 

You were then
And were of late,
It seemed to me, in many ways,
The same, slight 
cross-legged shadow. 
Resigned, alone, 
Callow, yes, and 
Downcast in your bearing.

But, caring too, in quiet ways. 
These would stay, just like 
Your saddened face. 
Or...is my view of you
misplaced?
For there was steel 
There too, in the end.
You would not bend.

That melancholy may
Not have left you. 
But neither were you bereft
Of regal dignity. 
And resignation,
Acceptance - 
These were 
Powers too. 

And while nothing ever changes,
In me, in you,
Sometimes there's more to see
In saddened eyes. 
A surprising prescient wisdom
Of what might come
When all is done. 
And what you're meant to be. 

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