We age, and our life pages turn relentlessly,
some, previously written are stolen,
defaced one by one, erased or camouflaged
from our crumbling memories.
Old fishing ponds have been filled in
to become housing estates,
defunct train lines ripped up, whole stations demolished even
for industrial or retail development,
old homes have been razed, larger houses
built with no gardens for children,
bustling corner shop doorways boarded up
together with chilly memories of teenage first kisses.
This wanton progress,
whilst re-shaping the future, erases our past,
loosening our grip on earlier realities, now
sighs of resignation are merely painless arrows
that carry a debilitating draught,
personal histories drugged into forgetfulness,
past lives remaindered
as our biographies fox and gather dust.
*
© Graham Sherwood 03/2020
grahamrichardsherwood.co.uk 
There”s a sort of eradication , an erasing with time’s impersonal march but clothed in a poem there is a consolation to go with the sadness. It feels as if we’re boxed in psychologically. Welcome to the club!
Ray
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I recently had to stop at a traffic light where an old steam shunter used to cross the main road whilst I was on the school bus, sadly long gone but the marks still visible across the fields. This time I had to stop because a new roundabout was being created, obliterating any signs of the crossing. Queue a poem!
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