Before we Knew

Your hand was in mine next to the clapboard shed (layer upon layer of us and peeling enamel) as far back as life played in black and white.
I could make up an age and say we were ten when we knew how to build a dam with flat rocks carefully and long before we knew how to make love.
You had to be home before the streetlights came on so we took pieces of shale and scratched letters softly on the road so the world would see them.

* * *

A smooth piece of white river gravel was a Lucky Rock.
Laminated shale that made a great sidewalk hopscotch board was a Chalk Rock.
A large cinder that didn't get crushed before it was put on a snowy road wasn't obsidian, it was a Volcano Rock.
A chunk of impure furnace slag was always a Meteorite.
Pelleted iron ore that leaked from train car gondolas was Sling Shot Ammo

It was more a matter of a perception of truth held in memory - surely more than any absolute could ever hope to embrace in defiance of imagination.