SOLASTALGIA

 

Kelowna 1950's

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 breeze -

life was innocent, and new,
days and nights of
joy and ease,

storybook clouds in skies of blue,

all our dreams still 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 five rooms small;

we wasted not one thing at all -

no plastic carted off each week,

no birds with string

caught 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 my prompt at What's Going On - Solastalgia - feeling homesick for the past; existential distress caused by environmental change.

Now the miles and miles of apple orchards I rode my bike past then are condos. The "country" has retreated to the far outskirts, past all the expensive cliffside mansions. Innocence lost, we all carry the weight of what today's affluence and excess has cost.