EVERYTHING OLD WAS NOT BAD
H. W. Bryce
Notes
There’s a tendency to abandon the old
Not just old people into institutions
But important traditions, institutions,
Buildings, genres in music, story-telling
Formats. Poetry, for examples, has swung
From formal formats to practically no
Format and they call it free verse. It has
Pendulummed from rhyme to blank, back
To rhyme or semi rhyme to blank, to the
Point where slurs and insults are being
Cast upon rhyme.
In the olden days, rhyme was honoured.
In the old days, there was land and farms
And gardens and happy toiling farm families.
Today we have corporate crop growers run
By city dwellers out of board rooms.
Everything old was not bad.
In the old days, crops were crops and they
Were healthy
Today we have genetically modified crops
And we don’t always know what we are eating.
Everything old was not bad.
In the old days, the old people stayed with
Their families, and when they died, the
Families washed the bodies and prayed over
Them and gave them decent, reverend burials.
Today, we burn the bodies, put them in a pot
And scatter their ashes to the wind.
Everything old was not bad.
In the old days, children learned the cycle of
Life on the farm; they played freely in Nature.
Today, children think milk comes from the
Store, many have never been to a farm or
Seen a cow and think gardening is slave
Labour. They play on cages, concrete pens.
Everything old was not bad.
In the old days, babies went where mother
Went, into the field to work, into the theatre
For work and was breast fed to weaning.
Today, babies are bottle fed, grow into communal day
gatherings, being taught basics by hired hands committee
Everything old was not bad.
We lived with horse and cows, chickens and sheep
We gathered wood for the wood stove, we melted snow
For the zinced family bath tub and went to the
Outdoor biffy for relief. We never overate,
we got plenty of natural exercise
and wore rosy red cheeks in winter
through shoulder high drifts. We walked miles
to the one-room school house and played
outdoors come what may the weather.
And we were one with Nature.
Everything old is not bad.
Image by Michal Jarmoluk from Pixabay
