History Lost To A New Generation

Where is our history?
Grandparents tell their tall tales
Walking twenty miles to school
Barefoot
Uphill
Knee deep in snow
The children laugh but they don't listen
Grandparents also tell stories of the old days
Living history wanting to be learned
Waiting in line for a five cent apple
Rooms lit by a single gas flame
Meat and sugar rationed
Barely enough to live
Men hauled off to war a half a world away
The children don't listen
Days of mourning over a lost president
Nuclear missiles off the Florida shore
Cars without FM radios
Black and white television
Sport greats without drugs
Dr Pepper with a peanut
Schools without gunshots fired in anger
The children don't listen
Four students killed for speaking their minds
A war we could never have won
Long hair and bell-bottoms
People looking for a peace
The children don't listen
Grandparents die
Taking their stories with them
Locking their history in silent lips
Unable to share the lives
History lost forever
Maybe the children should have listened






Poetry by Rob Taylor
Read 814 times
Written on 2007-02-09 at 16:35

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Bob
Yes this is a really good poem Rob, words that really grab at the distance between what was and what is, between the folly of not listening, not wanting to collect the experience of the those who passed before us and the collected wisdom that is put beneath the ground as we say goodbye, never knowing the full story.
2007-02-10


Kathy Lockhart
You have written a wonderful poem about our my generation and the one before. How I wish I still could listen to my father and mother's stories. Sometimes I still forget they are gone and jump up to call them to ask them something. I hope the next generation listens and listens well for they and their children are our future.
2007-02-09