Final Edit of the Accelerator Poem

The Adolescent Particle Accelerator

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

It is adolescent dreams
that are most missed - how each day
is revealed in the pain; the swirling
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 hours and happily watches
children grow while weeks are worked
or novels written, well-worn paths trod
and gardens replanted until the evenings demand
to be snugged up to with a classical book.

Everything we are remembers who we were -
all our bosons and all the convictions they carry,
all the gatherings of leptons and quarks and their anti-cousins
remember…

Remember those wonderful mad and out of control
years when we were hadrons flying towards
the many collisions of our particle accelerator years.