The Good Old Days

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.