Ok, it's time for a late critique, so I hope you're ready for this! (if not, suck it up!)

I will first start with the negatives on this piece then give you all the stuff I love about it. (I like to get the horrible junk with over with.)

For one, your stanzas; they just look weird in my opinion. I honestly believed you could've put more lines and enjambment in each stanzas. This isn't questioning your style of poetry, but I believe adding more lines to your stanzas (just cutting your long lines into shorter ones) will help the flow of the poem itself.

From reading the entire poem, I'm getting that the meter could be a very loose pentameter (something close to five emphasized syllables, but it can be more or less to fit the poem) I just get this because your entire poem has that feel of a "story" and I usually relate poems like that as lose pentameters. This part is of personal opinion though, so don't worry about this party.

One final negative comment on here is myself reading this one line in your poem:

"This disease won't stop its change. You'll change with it. "

After reading your entire poem and re-reading that I was thinking to myself "What the heck, WHAT DISEASE? what has happened to this girl, what matter of ambiguity is this?" I just ticked off because this poem WAS good, but everything seemed to be placed within a fog. However, I do understand your main themes of your poem, so I can't be a total crazed person on this.

I honestly don't like lovey dovey stuff, so I have a slight bias to your entire poem. However, it's only a slight bias because YOU do execute the poem in your own voice and style that I find good, and that's why I'm placing originality high up there.
Now, to the good stuff! First, your opener to the poem.

"I can't write a poem for you.
I can't sing a song for you.
I can't be you."

It is quick, it is simple, it is like an epigraph of sorts to bring about the thematic of the poem in a simple bit. This is what I mean when you should shorten your lines a bit because each line appears to have its own meaning and is connected to each one. I esp. loved the repetition of "you" at the end of each line.

Again, you repeat this awesomeness:

"I can't linger on woe.
I can't linger on "can't."
I can't linger here without you."

This has everything like I said above, except the repetition at the end of the lines which I find suit it. The middle line had the most impact in the entire stanza because it talks about the "can't's" in the lines and tells the reader that all of those things are things the narrator just doesn't have the luxury of doing. I also like the single "but" at the end of that stanza because it brings a "however" to the stanzas preceding it and after it.

The final stanza was just lovely two and it made it concrete to give you five starts on Vision and Impact. The I'll be's recall the repetition from before and yet is completely opposite to it because of the "but." in the middle.

In a final anecdote from me, I have to say this entire piece was an enjoyable read. If you just fix your stanzas a bit, this entire piece will be a wonderful work to see for a vast amount of people!

:icon critique-it:

The material you're working with is very difficult and of course heartbreaking. Your title is excellent and alludes to a problem: "how can change be vast?" Change is the disease that means woe and can't and will-not-be are certain issues. The last few sentences of your work really set off this point: your speaker will be a "rock," "memory," "here... forever." "I," I assume there, is tiny.

You do a great job of emphasizing the lack of motion against a far greater motion - can't even see the glaciers (frozen time, hearkening to "rock") because that requires boarding a plane. "Papa" in almost scare quotes because the disease emphasizes going out of existence more than coming into it.

That having been said, while all the elements are there, I feel like the punch this needs is missing at times. I hope you'll write more and expand this poem, give it far more personal details as opposed to the almost impersonal images it employs. "Change" and "death" mean a lot. But it's missing the people you love even before they're gone that moves many of us to tears. A little bit more description, maybe another anecdote or two could fit in well. The symbolism can probably be loosened and more told about the speaker and immediate audience of the piece.

As for your questions: tense is fine; it's sort of uplifting, it isn't clear to me how the speaker is there for the other, the problem is too large; it is easy reading but is abrupt and awkward as a story.