Puffballs and Saddle Shoes

  Puffballs, we called them
  Not knowing, or caring to know, their scientific names.
 We found them at random, without ever looking for them.
 They lay in wait, full and round and ripe,
  Waiting for detonation.

 We stomped them with our saddle shoes, or barefooted
  In the hot summer days.
  But no matter how hard we stomped,
 The results were always the same---
 No pop, no explosion:
 Just a quiet release of brown dust,
 Spores, we later learned.

 In the indolence of childhood, 
When everything remained  the same forever,
We knew what would happen, knew its unimportance,
But still we stomped.
Our saddle shoes bore the mute testament of dust.

Our vague, unspoken hope for something bigger
Waned, in time, and we no longer stomped.
Our childhood pursuits teetered at the brink of change,
And followed, all unknowing, the trail of an earlier dust.