in recess, children walking 'bout the yard,
are playing, chatting, sitting round in groups,
declaring statements, all without regard
to hands on basketballs and hula hoops,

their promises to one another, found
expressed in ways most dear to their own care,
the boys do carve their words into the ground,
the girls do whisper them into the air,

in twenty years when all, then grown, return,
recalling promises so far gone made,
how will they recollect, will they discern
the choices memory has wiped to fade?

the boys will find their fossils waiting there,
the girls will find a silence in the air

(C)2011, Christos Rigakos