We grow up with a heart of lust and with a passion for attaining the unattainable—the road stretches out in front of us passing oak, maple, elm, and weeping willow trees that tell no secrets when shook in the wind and small lakes with no names containing fish with no names...and by the fields of gold and green that can be seen as far as can be seen with sweet corn not quite ready to be picked—old farmhouses with white picket fences and two stories with bedrooms upstairs and cows and chickens and pigs in slop and horses standing quietly in the pasture watching the sunset and supper on the stove as the sun begins to hide behind the barns with Mail Pouch tobacco signs and Get US out of the United Nations signs from ???...the Vietnam era maybe???...faded now and disappearing with the unyielding merciless tick tock of time on the cuckoo clock on the wall--that of course waits for no one and makes old men out of strapping youths who were ten feet tall and bulletproof but no longer...young men who threw heavy bales of hay up on trailers in the bright country sunshine being pulled by ancient International Harvester tractors—and then at night threw themselves onto the beds of pickup trucks heading to town for some beer drinking and hell raising and girl watching and if they were lucky, more than watching...quarters for the jukebox with the latest songs from a long past era and next for the pool table for the boys who try to show off while the girls who try to act shy stand in the corner and giggle...and the cracked pavement with peek-a-boo white lines doing a dance all over them continued over old rusty and cracked paint cantilever bridges that looked like they could fall down anytime over the top of railroad tracks that have hauled tons of freight and passengers like broken down hobos and young people with dreams of a life somewhere else or just riding in old rusting graffiti sprayed boxcars for the adventure of it...through the poor parts of town with houses and apartments that had laundry hanging outside disheveled buildings with dirty windows and past train stations with sad faces wearing shabby clothes...and once the train chugs out of the city it’s up and over twisty rivers full of leaves and logs that drift along in the currents and have no say as to where they are going—rivers that were fished by grandfathers and sons and grandchildren as the legacy was passed down and on///, and the forests where they hid in trees, behind trees, and up in trees while they hunted squirrels, pheasants and rabbits...before long oxidation sets in and we rust as the world goes by and grows younger even as it grows older and we age with it—gray with it, become invisible in it and are sent off to homes with those of our aging decrepit kind in it--with old pictures of those good old days...and there we listen to our bones snap crackle and pop and we make the old man’s grunt as we fall into the recliner and catch a nap mid-day and wake up to reminisce...and then one day as it always happens, we turn to dust as all living things do...just piles of dust of what once was...memories evaporate into nothingness...things that happen never happened because there isn’t anybody around anymore to remember them happening...barn dances, first cars, first dates, first kisses--all gone.
