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Progress

I walk these streets
and wonder where I am.
Places look unfamiliar:
condos,
parking garages,
office towers,
where once were
trees,
ponds,
and ducks.

If I pause quietly
in what remains,
close my eyes,
stretch my mind,
I can see again
a warm summer night
when we walked together
(by moonlight)
admired the ducks,
lay in the grass,
and shared our dreams.

Why do men feel driven
to master living things
and overwrite with
steel
brick
concrete
what nature has created?

We can speak fine words
about the march of progress,
train ourselves to admire
glass and steel,
but late at night
faint memory calls.
What we once were
returns to mind,
and we realize
what we lost out there
will always be inside,
never to die.

This is a Sunday Scribblings and Sunday Whirl post.

16 comments:

Old Egg said...

How curious we both chose that line of thinking even if mine was a little darker! There is so much beauty that is destroyed in the name of progress that is irreplaceable.

March 16, 2013 at 10:47 PM
Ann (bunnygirl) said...

@OldEgg: On my weekend run I tried going to a place my husband and I used to go to when we were dating. It was a lovely little oasis in the city and attracted a broad cross-section of locals and tourists. I got to the place and didn't even recognize it for all the upscale condos and parking garages. I've been kind of sad all day, wishing that little park wasn't just a place in my memory now.

March 16, 2013 at 11:16 PM
Altonian said...

Progress - Bah! Lord Falkland said: "When it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change." Very true, and more so than ever in this day and age. Sorry about the little park.

March 17, 2013 at 3:01 AM
vivinfrance said...

Inexorable progress. We understand that people must be housed, and enterprise encouraged, but it is always a shock to go back to places we knew differently. The meadows of our memories will still be there for comfort.

March 17, 2013 at 3:18 AM
Stan Ski said...

I feel like that whenever I visit my home town... everything exactly the same, but completely different...

March 17, 2013 at 5:58 AM
Jae Rose said...

Yes progress..isn't necessarily for the better..externally at least..but i hope that we all hold the good things deep inside us..where they cannot be spoilt..

March 17, 2013 at 6:17 AM
Carol Steel said...

I like the lines "but late at night faint memory calls." That is the haunting time, isn't it? Life is all about change. I enjoyed this poem very much.

March 17, 2013 at 7:26 AM
Laurie Kolp said...

So true... the memories live within us.

http://lkkolp.wordpress.com/2013/03/16/the-sickening/

March 17, 2013 at 7:50 AM
brenda w said...

This is so very beautiful. There are urgings in all of us as nature pulls. Your expression of progress and that primordial pull is fantastic. I'm going back to read again.

March 17, 2013 at 11:07 AM
Josie Two Shoes said...

"Why do men feel driven
to master living things
and overwrite with
steel
brick
concrete
what nature has created?"

Perfect imagery... the definition of a tragedy!

March 17, 2013 at 4:05 PM
Sabra Bowers said...

I like memory poems and this is a good one. You make a statement with it and it is beautiful with its intimacy.

March 17, 2013 at 8:57 PM
Walt Wojtanik said...

Ann, a wonderful observation well written. Great use of the words, they seamlessly blend into you expression.

March 17, 2013 at 10:18 PM
Alice Audrey said...

I don't much admire concrete and glass, but I do find comfort there. Having spent plenty of time in the woods, I know very well that they are not the safe, park-like havens the city slickers imagine. I love to visit - kicking and camping - but I sure wouldn't want to try to live there.

March 18, 2013 at 5:14 PM
Susan Helene Gottfried said...

THIS is why I'm a Boy Scout. More than anything else, the need to be outdoors in nature.

March 18, 2013 at 9:10 PM
Belva Rae Staples said...

Progress isn't what it's cracked up to be. We have sacrificed too much for it.

March 22, 2013 at 6:29 PM
g-man said...

Bunny girl ....
I had a Bunny 55 this week to make you smile.
Sorry you missed it...:-(

March 23, 2013 at 8:11 AM

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