NEW EDIT of The Adolescent Particle Accelerator

I was born before Higgs born
before that time when man looked up and questioned
if we had the right stuff, born
before the giant step and the flag that did not flutter...

Yet it is my adolescent dreams I
miss most of all - how each day
I was revealed in the pain; the swirling -
the forces that bind and unravel
playing out again and again in kisses
and drinks and mornings waking next
to a breast or hip of someone unknown
only hours before. I miss howling
at the night, a bottle in one hand
and the future, a raging trumpeter,
stirring the forces to live on despite it all.

Now I feel the contentment and lap at the hours
like a sated cat, am happy and enjoy watching
my children grow while I work the hours or
write my novels, tread the paths and plant
in the garden or snuggle up with a good book.

Yet everything I am remembers who I was
all my atoms and all the spaces between,
all the leaps of synapses and chemical releases
remember…

Remember those wonderful mad and out of control
years when I was a higgs boson
flying towards the many collisions
of my particle accelerator years.