Plastic bags....

[Benjamin]

"Plastic bags aren't good for the environment!"

A young cashier piped out.

The old woman apologized and said:

"We didn't do 'green' in my early days."

 

Her mind recalled...

The noise of the mill.

How things relied on pairs of hands:

Wash tubs, mangles,

open coal fires,

carpet beaters

and donkey stones.

How she'd walked

just about everywhere

from the rented terraced house,

with its communal privy and cold water tap;

and only radio to cheer the dim-lit rooms.

 

She'd eked the doctor's sixpence

for her children's care;

clothed them with hand-me-downs

and struggled by on rationed food

ten years after the war.

Used brown paper bags

for school book backs

and other things.

Knitted, darned and sewed

while hubby was away at sea

until he drowned-- and then....

 

"Plastic bags aren't good for the environment!"

The young cashier piped out again...

"Your generation has so much to answer for!"

[dcmarti1]

Wow.

 

and only radio to cheer the dim-lit rooms.

 

and struggled by on rationed food

ten years after the war.

 

Bravo.

[Benjamin]

So much change in the space of one lifetime. I shudder at the rapid escalation of technology. We seem to stretch our metaphorical head forward as a species and yet in many ways are reluctant (or unable) to haul the metaphorical body with it.... And if the neck should part???

[eclipse]

an excellent poem-one of your best-Benjamin

[dr_con]

Really a delight, yes indeed, 'lost worlds' replaced by this flatland future. Well, well done.

 

Juris

[David W. Parsley]

A little perspective, anyone? Of course the next generation is obliged to see what work is at hand, to learn from the past, etc. BUT! In some ways that just means each is trying to hand the next, a world that is better with less privation and desperation. We do well to remember the price, the expenditure of love in its labors.

 

Thank You, Geoff.

- Dave