Good Old Days

The good old days
Simpler times
Innocent
Things, safer
People, more polite
When neighbors were friends
And everyone
Had a hand to lend

A myth
An illusion
There are no “good old days”
Nothing changes
We bemoan the loss
The theft
Of something remembered
Through the rose colored glasses
Of vanished childhood
As our parents did
And their parents before them
Every generation
Mourning a past
Simple and innocent

Those days were not
Simple and innocent
We were
As days and times do not change
We do
And mourn the loss
Of innocent selves

And children still play-
Though not the same as we
Once did-
Blissfully unaware
Of their own innocence
Until the day comes
When they, too, will look backwards
Through the blurry haze of growing up
And rue the loss
Of these
Good old days