Back when Summer mornings kissed my face
with a child's lips, soft and unlined,
history unwritten
They stretched themselves out
like promises along
the track of the Boston & Maine
shaking me from my bed
with freighted rumblings
We ran ahead of it, our childish laughter
mocked its plodding
our youthful agility a gift we took as a promise
history unwritten

back when afternoons baked summer
ochre into our skin and we colored
our dreams with the infinity laid before us
history unwritten
our music cicada's chainsaw
cutting through the trees
the call answered
by the carpenter's hewing buzz
when uncertainty was weighted only
on the end of a plank
our sawhorse mount

when evening held back as long
as the sun could be cajoled to shine
and when it fell was light upon our minds
no fearful thing lived in that night
the stars, re-lit by unseen hand
burned holes in its curtain
and if one dashed across the sky
it carried our happily everafters
in its lightning wake
history unwritten

the tracks of smooth and seamless days
the maps of our childhood's path
disappear into jungles untended
erasing ties to days of abandon
and trains move swiftly on new tracks
as youth gives way
to caution, dreams to schedules,
as age takes the pen
racing the lines down the page
before history writes the end