TUNNEL VISION

There were savage cowboys

and wild Indians, when

my grandparents were born.

Texas cattle, the steel plow and

steam were all the rage.

Mama sat in an old rocking chair

tired from frontier things she

still did even after her boys

came home from the war.

Twenty years later,

farm life meant Papa

had to get up at five,

while I dug deeper

into the quilts Mama made.

He fired up the pot belly

while her voice,

“SUUUIE! SUUUIEEE!

SUUE SUE SUE! SUUUIEEE!”

echoed down the lane

to the pasture out back

calling Bessie’s cowbell

to the barn for milking.

They grew up with the automobile

and radio, were young adults with babies

through all of modern art, literature, and

Existentialism. Darwin and Freud

were just a blot in the background.

They lived during all of it…

but were too busy to notice.

Author's Note

Whose?

Reviews

[Lorry]

Some people were just too busy getting s**t done to even know that things we take for granted now, because we all have more "me" time these days than what they used to. People used to work hard, but lived in hope that retirement would be when they got a lie in, rest or even just a seat to sit on, and most didn't even live to see the age where a long retirement was reached.
Now were living longer and have more time to contemplate how easier we had it than the previous generations. Just stay away from thinking how easier the young ins will have it when it gets to there time. That's a problem for another person to worry about. And they will, because either we'll be in such a mess by then they'll need to work until they're 96, or some crazy will have a bad day and nuke everyone, because his toast wasn't done exactly the way he likes it.
Enjoy the moments we have, because worrying about what little we have left is a waste of that precious time.
I think I'll spend some of Sunday checking my eyelids for holes.
Hope yours is more fruitful Vol 😊

[Vol]

Lorry,
Exactly! However I have met very few people in my 74 years who have any real desire to examine themselves or what is at the core of our cultural decline. I am a Christian, but a complete heretic to organized religion. To be a Christian, according to Christ himself, comes down to just three things, Love God, love EVERYONE, and live
life abundantly. Everything else the church piles on is rubbish and a power grab. Abundant life includes beauty in all its forms, good food and beer, belly laughs, and awareness of the troubles we see with an eye to solutions. Oh, and dance... ya gotta dance to make it real.
Vol

[Chris Shaw]

Yes, some were focused on putting bread on the table. Hard graft. Long hours. Early to bed, early to rise. Times change and these days most people have more free time for other pursuits and interests. Enjoyed the description in this write Vol. Very atmospheric. Thank you.

Chris

[Vol]

Chris,
Thanks for taking the time. Just preserving family memoirs...

[emmajoygreen]

Whose? Rather think that every generation is like your wonderful poem, the changes, the moods, the efforts, the complexities, etc. are the same but different, so very different. Each generation, season or whatever, has its own extremes and variations, taking up time and so seems misusing it. Time to sell the roses, learn their forms and scents, etc. tragically overlooked. 'No time to stand and stare.. .. '

Your take and its history really is both lesson and warning, learn to stand still, look and listen..while you can Thank you for the nudge, Vol.

[Vol]

As a humanitarian time of change, those times when normal perception had a universal change of paradigm, I think of The Renaissance, The late seventeenth /early twentieth centuries, the Modernists of the early twentieth century, the sixties, and today. I've been here for the last two of those and was able to assimilate the change in real time. It's what poets, writers, philosophers and artists do. The rest of the world just moves along and hope they don't die from it all.
Vol

[emmajoygreen]

Perhaps those beings who watch the world with a third eye have ways of seeing the worthy excess
read morePerhaps those beings who watch the world with a third eye have ways of seeing the worthy excess
Tis said that ugliness in beauty in a unique ways; that a speck is held in a space that might have been taken by blot or blob. Is possibility an art form do you think, Vol?