Born before the Higgs was conceived, born
before that moment when man questioned
if we had the right stuff, born
before the giant step and the flag that did not flutter...

Yet it is adolescent dreams
that are missed most of all - how each day
is 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. It is the howling
at the night, a bottle in one hand
and the masked future, a raging trumpeter,
stirring the forces to live on despite it all.

Now contentment, a sated cat, laps
at the hours and happy watches
children grow while weeks are worked
or novels written , the well-worn paths trod
and the garden replanted until the evenings demand
the snuggling up with a good book.

Yet everything we are remembers who we were -
all our 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 we were a higgs boson, god's own particle,
flying towards the many collisions
of our particle accelerator years.