Kelowna 1950
Don Collier photo
I am homesick for a time
I thought would last forever:
golden days under the sun,
when the world and I were young.
Apple orchards and lake ripples,
flower scent upon the wind -
life was innocent, and new,
storybook clouds in skies of blue,
all our dreams up ahead
just waiting to come true.
Hanging on my grandma's gate,
ice cream truck tinkling down the street:
a shiny dime was riches then.
(Oh, I Remember When!)
Most houses, then, were small;
we wasted not one thing at all -
no plastic carted off each week,
no birds with balloon string
hopelessly entangled in their beaks.
Now birds are falling from the sky,
as I look up and wonder why
we changed so much that we forgot
the lovely life of days gone by,
when the world and I were young,
and all our songs lay up ahead
just waiting to be sung.
for Brendan at Earthweal : Solastalgia
Solastalgia - feeling homesick for the past; existential distress caused by environmental change
I have always wanted to grow up in my momma’s time instead of mine.
ReplyDeleteSolastalgia - I totally feel this and I am only 23! Can't imagine how you must feel. Wonderfully put as always xoxo
ReplyDeleteNostalgia is such a powerful current for that rudderless boat of solastalgia -- we are drawn to the past for inhabiting what the animal in us called home. But when exactly was that golden age? Ever before the tomorrow we have to live with. Loving and fine accounting of what that magic era might have smelled and felt like ... And a great response to the challenge. Thanks Sherry!
ReplyDeleteThis is lovely, but I suspect that our rosy remembrances of this type have more to do with who WE were then what the world was. Still, this makes marvelous reading, Sherry.
ReplyDeleteI think we do tend to paint our youth in better color than it was... but still there are things we have lost (and not just our youth)
ReplyDeleteLovely Sherry. Age often makes us see our youth through rose-colored glasses, but sometimes it helps to have a vision that isn't dark, and heart that isn't heavy, however far back you have to go to find it.
ReplyDeleteI love this Sherry, especially the third stanza, just superb. No plastic to cart off every week. Now it's ridiculous and we try to be prudent.
ReplyDeleteyes, Sherry, so do I. great write.
ReplyDeletethe simpler days, the days when we did not suspect what was to come. But now we live in fear and grief. Love how your poem expresses this.
ReplyDeleteAh, now I am nostalgic for the 50s, too, although I think they were good because I was a child and free and safe. Add ice cream and oh, it was wonderful. Mine were red winged blackbirds. I rescued a bird from string once a few years back ... We will never be unwoke again.
ReplyDeleteSome of us had a brief discussion Wednesday about whether the good old days really WERE better than today. The consensus was no. I disagree. Life was simpler and safer than. Not the fears we have today. But then again these people would say we had different fears...then. I still disagree. I would go back in a heartbeat.
ReplyDelete