Permanence through Impermanence

My lover is both the cause and the consternation of my love. Inception came easily, though it occurred without conception. And now are we to hang apart at the first stumbling block? It is said a hot flame burns but briefly, though surely in that selfsame fire the tinder is just as assuredly consumed. And what remains? Hot white ash. The pure essence of the life that was. And with the introduction of a rain, fertile fuel for further life. To grow, be nourished, and consumed again. Is what is true of the river true of the fire? That it is never at any moment the same? Yet as the mist rises, snow falls, renewing the wellspring with that inherent and self-evident essence, though it has experienced many incarnations in between. May not also the essence of the fire breath again in that cyclic transmutation, burning, renewing, growing and dying, in eternal combustion? A fleeting thing, a moment.  A single flower in a carnival parade, speaking the aroma of every flower in every parade. And a thing intangible as love surely is as mutably constant as a flower or a flame.