Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Once was

** Once was **
The commune is ageing
Doesn't mean a thing to you
An aberration of fresh hope is fading
A better life is what we sought to do
Families buying houses together
Not one or two but several
We pulled down fences between
The houses now looked in to common ground
We were a village with a village green
Here a broader community than just a family
Here associate more intimately than suburbia
Grew crops and vegetables
Allowed some fowl to roam unchecked
Trying to develop a sustainable model
Chart a different course from those around
Our children grew up integrated not isolated
We lived a life set to seasons not to train timetables
The issues came when the children left
Young adults leaving to seek their own identities
We could not afford to buy properties around
And in truth our philosophies as a group
Were broad and diverse
Some had children and some had not
How could the community support one by taking from the other
And then after the children left
We discovered a fact all come to know
Time ages us and makes us slower
The seasons clock includes Autumn and Winter
We had lost some already along the way
Relationship breakdowns and those who found
Living in a village was not their way
Now those left discovered the village could not sustain
If all were old and ailing
Some young had returned
But our numbers were ever declining
Ad as they did so did the houses
Sold off to pay out those leaving
Give them chance for life elsewhere
And as age captured us the fences went back up
The village gave itself back to suburbia
As those who did not follow our dream
Brought the properties we had to sell
Till now the world reduced to this
One backyard for the village
A village of only me and the hens
Which scratch through the Autumn leaves
The commune is ageing
Time has found us out and called us down
The dream of village gone
As I see the ghosts of those who are past
I wish your dreams a better end.

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