The exercise:
Write a four line poem about: memory lane.
We had a spectacular conclusion to our peach season today, as we sold all eleven crates (about 220 pounds) that we had left. We're both a little sad to see the end of them, particularly Kat who has been going through a pretty serious craving for them lately.
Tomorrow we're hosting our second annual Prana Farm BBQ. I hadn't realized until I looked up that link that we're doing it exactly a year after the first one. Funny how things work out sometimes.
Anyway, we're expecting an even bigger turnout than last year, which is nice, and most of them didn't attend the first one, which is even nicer. Makes it seem like we've managed to expand our community here.
Mine:
Sights, sounds, scents so fresh,
As though this were yesterday;
But this path is cluttered
With words I could never say.
The barbecue sounds like fun, and I love the idea of an annual one like that. Makes me wish I could get over to Canada a little more often :/
ReplyDeleteWell done with the peaches as well, though it sounds like you should have kept a crate back for yourselves!
I like the way your poem turns today, it feels very natural and unforced. I suspect many of us have memory lanes like that.
Memory lane
Your memory-house stands on memory lane,
A little small, drab, and plain.
But then you are young and I am old,
My memory-palace has too much to hold.
[A memory palace is a mental construct people use to remember very large lists of things, but I'm completely taken the idea of a real one.]
guys, i like your entries and greg, yeah, i am taken with that notion, too.
ReplyDeletemarc, i like that u r influencing your community in such a positive way.
i couldn't confine my thoughts today, i went to town on this one...
Memory Lane (dwp)
I crossed the park and landed on the other side of the town. I looked at the street sign, it was called 'Memory Lane.'
I thought it was poignant. It suited the village-like atmosphere of the place. It felt like a portal to me as old memories were triggered...
My memories of childhood are full of home-baked peanut cookies, black and white movies on TV, playing games on the sidewalk in the hot sun and walking a long way to a strict school through the heavy winter rain.
In my childhood there was no obesity.
You always had someone to play with after school because kids were always in the street playing hopscotch or kicking a football or bashing a ball with a bat of sorts, usually rummaged from a garage sale.
When a new house was being built we all climbed in through the manhole amongst the stumps underneath where the flooring was going to be laid and we ran surefooted along the joists. There was never a thought that we could fall and hurt ourselves. There were no makeshift wire fences or guard dogs to keep us out in those days.
Yes, as I approah the twilight years, those memories feed me with nostalgia, a soothing salve to my increasingly cynical soul.
What does this younger generation have to remember? RSI in their thumbs from too much texting and gaming - see, they've had to invent new words to describe what it is they do. They've morphed nouns into verbs to describe it because there is not enough time in their lives to say it properly anymore.
They'll remember store-bought cake and frozen pies and take-out more often than not. They'll recall no voice greeting them home from school, no afternoon tea waiting for them, no sounds in the street from the locals. The streets are silent now because everyone is indoors, but when you walk by those houses (as if anybody walks anymore) you can ear the Pow! Pow! of pretend lasers and the fake Boom-Crashes emerging from electronic media devices.
They won't remember any thoughtful dinner conversations because they never had any - dinner-time was spent eating off a tray in front of a too-loud TV or, worse, the muffled sounds of dinner being picked at up in the bedrooms of their two-storey houses whilst they pecked at their keyboards filling in the boring details of their lives on Facebook and the like.
They might remember, if they have three hundred digital photos proving it, their yearly trips overseas though, without video proof, those memories might be hazy as they're no longer special. Do something too often and it no longer holds distinct memories or feelings. They can afford these expensive holidays of being on tour through Europe because Mother works too, but they won't have actually seen much along the way because the video games are buzzing and clicking in the back of the car, or they are watching a movie on the DVD players built into the back seats of the SUV Daddy is driving on the Autobahn.
Memory Lane might seem a little empty when those youngsters enter the nursing homes of their twilight years. There’ll be nothing to interject sanely through the mists of their encroaching dementia.
They’ll be living on No-memory Lane.
Memory Lane
ReplyDeleteToday I held my granddaughter and read her a story
About a street, a parade, a blue giraffe in a lorry
Her mother had listened to this same book, turning the pages
And both giggled at the same spot - purple lions in their cages
Greg - oh my yes, there are worlds of possibilities with the idea of real memory palaces. My imagination is trying to go play while my brain is complaining it's bedtime.
ReplyDeleteWritebite - I'll never complain about someone going to town on one of my prompts :D
Really enjoyed your musings on this one. I plan on making sure my little one's memory lane is absolutely cluttered :)
Aholiab - a lovely little scene you've conveyed there. Can't help but smile picturing it.
i think you will, too, marc, good on you!
ReplyDelete