Paul Willason | + Follow Poet |
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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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