Touching your hand, my love, as I drift into a dream this eve, I am taken back to schools of long ago.  Country school, dusty chalkboards and janitor lingering in the halls with a 

wide push broom, whistling Big Bands tunes then humming Spanish ballads, paned windows dulled by the dust storms riled in the windy heat give little illumination to the small

rows of desks in each room.  

  Fleeting memories of my own days in a country school mingle with these images.  I'm holding the cherry cake I baked for a junior high picnic under ancient trees with wide trunks and scrolling

roots protruding out of the earth and diving in again; the presence of many haunts and souls which came before my time lingering in such a place.  

  I have come to know I am owned by no mortal man and tame only under your fluid caress; I abide by your wishes solely as we are taken to days far older than the human I now behold in the mirror.

 Sprawling before me are grasslands yellowed and dried from the stinging heat of the day, clouds and memories of soldiers on the lawn, drilling.  Inside the library walls is a good place to get 

away from situations, and certain people.  Leafing through the torn pages of old books from 1929, their musky, heady scent takes us back to days before we existed in the forms

we've come to know.  

 The chemicals inside the old lab have the same effect; whisked away by quiet thought and contemplation, the storm on the dusky pink horizon promises to quench the land and send the soldiers 

to their quarters.  The forms are only shapes and outlines except for those who can see us.  

  When the rain spilled down all ran for shelter; we were in the shower stall and attacked by a German boy and some others; that is why we keep our side and they keep theirs.  Where is Double A when we need him?-- Off some place much more tranquil, pouring over  crumpled maps and geology books safe within the library walls.  We gather the strength to walk the course as if nothing has happened only find the parched grass has revived to a rich green and the boys have all become drunk with whiskey, blackening one another's eyes and wrecking their cars.  Rain washes away the pain of the parched land; it washes away the pain and shame of a man's soul, too.  

  A journey ends, my love, and we part again.  I carry this memory with me, intertwined with my own, even though it can't be mine for I never lived in that time.  My hand slips away from yours and in the pink horizon a storm sets in for the morning, freezing the already cold ground and washing away the pain of parting with you as I walk through the world as it is today, leaving behind the maps, beakers and  the damp, dusty books of long ago.