little red wagon

where had you gladly gone, your ironclad wheels ripping ruts along the trail? Prairie schooner, I rode you in my sleep, your white sails shimmering across the grasslands of my dreams. Now you sit, proudly painted red in a corner of a Colorado campground. Your painted planks can hardly bear the shuffle of children's feet as they jump into space - off and out from you. What hands hewed your wood, and drove your nails? What horses hauled your weight over the mountain passes, fouling your wood with mud and sweat as a firm hand drove them ever upward? And why is the past but a springboard to the future? Your wheels are red now. You fly silently in your stilled dreams. I walk away from the past to my car, collect the kids, and drive home - pondering.