I am saddened whenever I ride by the home(s) where I grew up. Though we didn’t have a lot of money, we had enough. Though there were unhappy times, as is wont in any life, for the most part, we had a great childhood. Don, my brother, and I often talk of it.
Life was simple. A lot of time was spent outside; especially wandering wooded trails, climbing trees, building tree forts, playing in brooks and fields, riding bikes, playing hop-scotch in the road, and erecting big snow forts with tunnels at the end of the driveway in the winter. (Things parents now-a-days would not allow their children to do.) We waited for the school bus without a parent present and sometimes we’d walk far down the street to wait with other kids.
We grew up, as kids do, and moved away from the childhood town. The years passed and eventually there were moves to the other side of the state. Going back to the old home area is seldom done, but when I do, there is always a sadness. We can never go back to childhood, to those simpler times…
I want to do more thinking and talking about this. It feel like it was a lifetime ago. It was. There are stories to tell, stories lost...
Home Town Return
The claws of unfamiliar
in a familiar place
rip holes in my heart
Recognition brings sadness
the familiar
deteriorated or gone
With brightness glare
new sites
dot the once-open fields
and woods where
we played hide ‘n seek
now filled
with buildings and concrete
The many changes
make the landscape
hardly recognizable
My stomach knots,
heart pounds
sadness permeates
I try to remember
yester year
it is but a faded memory
The wooded trails
I once walked
are no more
What was familiar
will no longer be…
even memory fades.
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