It Was An Age When
It was an age when
bread was delivered
by a baker in a horse and cart
and carried to the house
in big wicker basket,
and the milkman left bottled milk
on the doorstep before the sun
was up, and old men
kept an eye on the street
and raced out with a bucket
to shovel up the manure
prized for giving a backyard
vegie patch a jolt.
It was an age when the rabbitoh
would come along the street
with rabbits hung in rows
in the back
of his beat up truck
and women in pinnies
would come out with a plate
to take a bunny or two
to bake that night.
It was an age when groceries
were delivered once a week
in a wooden box shouldered in
by the grocer and placed
on the kitchen table
to be unpacked over a cup
of tea and bit of banter.
It was an age when lollies
and biscuits were sold unpacked
and children walked to school,
when serials and quiz shows
kept families huddled around
radios on cold winter nights
and held a generation
of kids captive to the Saturday
night countdown
on the top 10 hit parade show.
All said,
the age no longer matters
yet seems to find its way
back here.
We all carry our own,
ingrained like play dirt
in the hard to reach places
of the soul.
Perhaps that's what
poetry is about, or at least
that part of it that some say
points more towards
a pedestrian end,
the sad preservation
of the oddities of an age
by an ever diminishing few
and before memories flicker
and finally go out.
Copyright © Paul Willason | Year Posted 2023
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