People long for the “good old
days,”
those days when life seemed
simpler,
and perhaps it was, locked in our
own
little sphere of the good life,
separated
from the bigger world around us,
and
in our innocence and ignorance
so much better off than today’s
fast world
of growing unease and political
unrest,
that time we lived in then, believed
in,
a simpler time with the good life
promised,
only to find that today isn’t
what we expected, failing to
fulfill
what we hoped it would become, a
global
community saving itself, together,
working
for its own good and the good of
all humanity.
Have we forgotten Vietnam, dying
for what cause,
and the protests, the marches,
death in a foreign land
broadcast into our homes, the
ravages of war,
fearing a draft that would send us
there, or fleeing?
Have we forgotten Dr. King and
civil rights,
and the violence that ensued, all
men created
equal, but not, beaten down, a
truth denied
because of race and color and creed?
Have we forgotten what it was like
to be different,
not fitting in, an alternate
morality, free love,
free to believe, Peace, Love, and
Rock & Roll,
the sins of our lives excluding us,
denying us?
Have we forgotten sit-ins,
walk-outs, revolutions,
Power to the People, Folk Songs,
protest songs,
the Summer of Love and Woodstock,
the things
we fought for, the changes we
worked toward,
the good times we knew were coming?
And we wonder, now, where it all
went wrong,
clinging as we do to old ideas, old
ideals,
unprepared for a future we could
only
envision and not create; forgotten,
too, are
those “good old days,” beyond us
now, gone,
leaving us still ignorant and
innocent, perhaps alone
and afraid, stuck in a time we
fought so hard to leave behind,
a single point in time on the way
to today.
