got in my car
and drove
over roads
i used to know
went to places
i used to go
i know
it's been a while
but i
barely
recognized
my old world
when did the
woods become a mall
my grade school's
not there at all
pieces of me
have gone missing
the more things change
the more i see
i can't take it all with me
but i'm
keeping the photos
in my memory
~Rene
This is beautiful Rene, we do carry the best memories within us. And it is a shame to see our tangible memories gone. Keep looking within, it's all there.
ReplyDeleteoh yeah going back is weird...where did all the streetlights come from and the places i miss abandoned or long gone...nice write.
ReplyDeleteReally enjoy this. I went through this yesterday. We'd gone into town - something I haven't really done in years and years - and my old skating rink when I spent most of my free time as a kid is now a Salvation Army... Bizarre and heartbreaking.
ReplyDeleteGreat write.
I went on a Google tour of my grade school and home town the other day. It felt so strange to google-walk the old street that I used to travel every morning to school. Love this...thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteTo know what to keep, that is the challenge, so that the mind is not so full it cannot accept something new.
ReplyDeleteSomewhere in the quantam fog, neighborhoods and memories begin to bleed into each other...
Life has to change, but it's such a shame that so many of the changes are retrograde. Your poem was charming.
ReplyDeleteVery nice I know the feeling. When going back to my hometown once every couple of years more and more is changed and and with every recognisable piece memories are flooding back
ReplyDeleteI used to love to play outside in marshes and fields too. How did it become a mall? You don't have to answer... things are as they are... a definite shortfall of memories!
ReplyDeleteRene, it is so sad when things that we remember so well change. I cannot even drive by one of the houses I used to live in because of how it looks now. It saddens me. Your poem brought lots of memories to the surface for me, which means it was a good poem!
ReplyDeleteIs it Morris county of which you speak? :)
ReplyDeleteI just went back to the Church where my Mother's funeral took place. The church attached to the school I attended over fifty years ago. And walked into my best friend from that time period. We kept looking at one another wondering if it could be possible. It was, and we shared only a bit of our present lives, much more of what we remembered. We keep the important pieces within us, always,
ReplyDeleteElizabeth
Yeah. Sometimes, I love not taking pictures. I want to remember it with my own senses. Much more delicious.
ReplyDeletesweet memories,
ReplyDeleteI always remember some old roads traveled.
but, without reminders, many do fade away.
beautiful spirits.
Thanks for sharing.
Nicely done! I felt a touch of nostalgia with this. The house I lived in the first 18 years of my life was bulldozed more than 20 years ago. The houses of my grandparents and great grandparents too. My grade school no longer stands either. Only memories remain, and some of them I'd like to shed, but eventually they too will be gone. "Life is a casting off," as Linda Loman says in Death of a Salesman.
ReplyDeleteGood poem, Rene!
Nostalgic... lovely piece on the changes in all of our lives. I was amazed a number of years ago when I took a trip to my childhood area and had found very little had changed. I know the area I am in now, even over just the last few years has changed drastically! The wonderful thing we call progress, isn't always progress. Somehow the forest and the trees seem to be a sad progress in missing from this new world of ours.
ReplyDeleteOh this reminds me of where I live. It used to be only cornfields and cows. Where I live it still is, but 15 min away from me there is every store you can think of. I wish, I took pictures back then
ReplyDeleteWysteria
"the more things change
ReplyDeletethe more i see
i can't take it all with me"
Yes, but for most, uncomfortable.
Your comment back home was 'the ebst'!
Those changes are essence of life. Nicely done.
ReplyDeleteMy grade school is still there, but what I can't understand is why isn't there a plaque in the front, saying that I went there? Why isn't there a Fireblossom wing? Why hasn't the street it sits on been named after me?
ReplyDeleteOh, you say I have to achieve something first? Drag. That could take a while. ;-)
Thanks everyone for reading and commenting...i really do appreciate that you have taken the time :)
ReplyDeleteAnd Fireblossom? I'm just as shocked as you are!
Why those...those... fools!
Change is the only constant- sometimes it makes me happy, sometimes it leaves me sad, I can totally relate to your un-still world.
ReplyDeleteIt's most depressing to see that those places you are familiar with, have undergone change, a drastic change.
ReplyDeleteI've experienced this myself several times. Nostalgic and good write.
So true. My town has changed so vastly in 20 years. I like looking out old photo's for 'remember when that was....'
ReplyDeleteThe world is in a perpetual state of change, ever evolving--so strange to go back, to wander those places we have wandered in our youth, and see how greatly they have changed. You have well-captured the feeling, an "un-still world" indeed.
ReplyDelete"Keeping the photos in my memory" - precisely.
ReplyDeleteMy grandparents farm yard--house, cellar, barn, corral, wells, worker shacks--has been scraped clean, as if nobody ever lived there.
Two houses and an apartment building where I lived at different times have also all been torn down or moved.
They can NEVER take away your memories, it's true. Amazing how small childhood haunts look, coming back as an adult. Nice, Rene.
ReplyDeleteAmy Barlow Liberatore
totally bittersweet. My old backyard edged a field of tall grass and raspberry bushes. My brother and I would spend hours a day playing there.
ReplyDeleteNow it's a giant parking lot to a second-rate hotel.
(But now I live 3000 miles away and I can remember it however I choose.)
(sigh).. thank god for photos...don't you agree?
ReplyDeleteA nice and sadly nostalgic piece here, Rene... Floating images are drifting in my mind's eye now..
I agree. It just keeps getting weirder, one suburb growing into another, landmarks disappearing. I wish we valued our green space as much as we value convenience.
ReplyDeletePearl
link an old poem to potluck today,
ReplyDeleteyour support is valued.
Happy Writing,
Happy Sharing.
you rock.
xxx