Substrate Two

Before words
There is being.
Not nothing.
A raw there-ness,
unnameable,

There is change.
The flicker,
the shift,
the river that refuses stillness.

There is continuity.
Not permanence,
but enough carry-over
that a moment leans into the next,
that patterns remember and hold.

There is difference.
This and not-that.
Before and after.
Silence cut by sound…