Hope persists like

barnacles on a boat, 

even as said boat 

sinks, and nobody

proves invulnerable;

because even Thetis

couldn't guard her 

son from menace:

she dipped him

in the river Styx,

but left his heel

ground for a mortal

wound, portal to

the land of those

who perish in the

flux of a different

river, the one

of Heraclitus.