"Rust Thou Art..."

    Okay, apologies to H.W.L.  We know it's "Dust."  But "Rust thou art, To rust returneth wasn't spoken of the soul" either.
    When the vines and bushes were cleared away, not only the rusty bones of the kids' swingset were exposed to the light of day, but also the memories of the time when it was a part of daily life,
   This was not our first swingset.  The first one was located in our front yard, near our well and some rose bushes, gifts from  my mother when our home was still new. On our first  swingset's last day, the 2 older kids had been playing on it, part of their then daily routine.  It had what my daughter called a "school bus seat," she who was fascinated with her older cousin who'd started school, a wondrous adventure that she could only imagine.
    We were just sitting down to  supper, the youngest in his Baby Butler seat, when we heard a very sharp crack, as if someone had thrown something against our living room window.  I opened the front door to see a car smashed against the front side of our neighbor's house, the people just climbing out of it.  The car had entered sideways through our driveway, straight through the very gymset which the kids had just left, and over the top of our well. The cracking sound was a stone thrown up against our window by the speeding vehicle, whose tires had also thrown up  a sheet  of gravel, shattering the rear glass window of my 1966 Chevrolet Super Sport Convertible.  
     The swing set was tossed a distance, severely mangled  including the school bus seat.  Eyeing its remains, she broke into tears, crying out, "I wish it didn't happen!"  Poor innocent child.
   So we bought another, a little bit bigger, school bus seat included, though not quite the same. We located this set further away from the road, not wanting  to tempt fate again.  It still sits in the same place.  A speeding car has never struck it, though that wasn't true for the Dogwood tree we planted on the other side of our lot, which was hit twice and destroyed.  Not true either when a driver smacked his car into the maple tree in front of our house, actually driving it partly up the trunk.  Nor true of the hit and run driver who one night sideswiped our station wagon parked in the driveway.
   The swingset escaped the devastation of traumatic injury, but now mostly has succumbed to the inevitable decay of time and rust.
    "

"Life is real. Life is earnest. And the grave is not its goal. Dust thou art, To dust returneth was not spoken of the soul."