Art Deco Child Picked
Musing over re-incarnation
At times I feel re-incarnated.
Images come to my mind’s eye
when I hear Glenn Miller music.
Smoky dance-halls, lines of girls,
uniforms and growing up. . . fast.
Hark-back memories.
Easy times in Art Deco cities.
Climbing Clarice Cliff trees
resplendent in primary colours.
Candy-box houses filled with windows
stained with angular patterns.
Streets populated with Airflow cars
driven by double-breasted suits
with turn-ups and razor-sharp creases.
The company of bob-cut ladies.
Travelling on trains
pulled by idealized locos
puffing cotton wool smoke.
And I wonder why these memories
feel cut-off in a sudden. . . .
and why the drone of a high-flying B-29
brought irrational fear when I was five-years old.
The past often seems alluring because we don’t have to live it and only the positive aspects are shown. Idealizing a past relationship etc. Nice poem.
You are right, however some aspects of the past are desirable not because they were pleasant, but just that life moved at a slower pace. More time to think things through.
Wow! This brought back memories!
This was reminiscent of my pulling my hard of hearing mother into the under-stairs shelter!
It is a really nice poem, expressing (I assume) things that your mind’s eye echoes to at times.
Allen
Thank you Allen. I guess that is about the way this idea arrived. On occasions I had a feeling of reminiscence for something that never happened. Re-incarnation or the power of cinema and TV on the sub conscious. Who can say? Certainly my fear of the aeroplane was real. I assume it was a B-29, it was very high up. It could have been a Lockheed Constellation or a Pan Am Stratocruiser flying over the London suburbs, no jets back then.
I’m often nostalgic for harsh times I lived through – why? Perhaps it’s the certainty of survival – we don’t know what tomorrow may offer so the present has intimations of jeopardy – our yesterdays were not that bad as we outlived them.
Good writing
Rick
Thanks Rick
I grew up in post-war London Suburbia (well it was Kent at the time) streets and streets of mock-Deco semis. I remember the cold un-central heated rooms and the my damp bedroom. I suppose it was state of the art then, but looking back it seems (wrongly) like the stone-age.