In an old school building

There is time to watch the eagle's talons
grasping what it may, the arrows or the wheat
creating legend some will fight for, creating
heritage they didn't fully understand.

I saw the children's feet
upon the wooden stairs, concave
from all the years of children climbing,
rushing down to music only they could hear--

their colors blending in the tapestry
of always yesterday, always in
concelebration of the swirl
of one more generation in the dance.

They stopped in time,
and with their piquant crumb of insight
that a fleeting pre-pubescence gives,
informed me with a glance

the moment was their own, and I
might frame it only with my memory,
its capture that pure vanity
that only visionaries ponder.

Then why do they not take
their voices with them?
With what trans-time device
do they still rush

upon my consciousness, insisting
they are better ghosts
than those before them
on the stair?

And then I knew
their predecessors too
are children, mirroring the lives
of everyman

who crept, and marched, and flew
through centuries of festive rite
and held their sage observers
in their thrall

as headlong children teaching
love to watchers, sprites
intoxicated by the dust of chalk
and leaving

their forgotten kind of laughter
in the staircase walls
for passersby who listen
with their hearts.
~