Petrified wood, petrified psyche

PETRIFIED

Massive, towering trees
Were transformed into stone
In the twinkling of a geological eye.
All the remains petrified 300 million years.
As Heraclitus’ permanent change
Hit a wall of geochemical inertia.
So, too, can human attitudes, emotions and states
Suddenly and sharply change,
Then become frozen in the face of many a further assault —
Petrified.
Death is the final dissolve
But short of that, few life acids can eat away
Frozen fear, lithified anxiety, calcified cowering.
But the hurts themselves remain liquid,
Even if partially congealed;
Only the reaction and the framings become concretized.
And so, like marrow inside bone
New psychological antibodies still spew forth,
Even if fighting the wrong issues the wrong way —
Petrified to do anything else.
Life is often neither growth nor regression.