The Years of Change

 

 

 

Turn back the clock one hundred years, and maybe fifty more,

Where did we find the knowledge that we didn’t have before,

I know in all our yesterdays, we had some fine progression,

But from the not too distant past

They’ve been in quick succession,

It seems that our intelligence was under lock and key,

Was it just the rich and famous who refused to let us see?

We used to count our pennies on our fingers and our toes,

Where was our intelligence, it seems that know one knows?

 

 

 

For very many thousand years, it seems that life stood still,

It appears that our intelligence, did not contain our will,

Crawling from the Neolithic implements of man,

Moving at the snails pace,

It seems, since time began,

Today we take for granted, inventions old and new,

That is not the only change, just take a look at you,

Perhaps one hundred years ago, you couldn’t read or write,

The rich man kept you in your place, money was his might.

 

 

 

By candlelight we learned to write, they couldn’t keep us down,

We learned with such rapidity, the rich began to frown,

Steam blasted locomotives, now we were on the move,

To engines and inventions,

Which man would soon improve,

Suffragettes and votes for women, another change of plan,

For she would not be left behind, she’d equal any man,

A poor woman should be ignorant, to write was frowned upon,

But she would not be ignorant, her intellect had won.

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From candlelight and oil lamps, to mantles lit with gas,

Electric light was wonderful, gaslight could not surpass,

Motor cars to telephones, wireless, then television,

No invention did stand still,

It afforded great revision.

A washing machine will do the work, with no help at all,

The work a poor girl used to do, would drive us up the wall,

Music box to record player and then to music centre,

Changing shape so many times, that road I cannot enter.

 

 

 

We fly the skies in aeroplanes, so very different now,

The aeroplanes of yesterday, are children’s toys, I vow,

We have satellite and camcorder and mobile telephones

With computers on the Internet

We surf the world wide zones,

I thought it was above my head, this really wasn’t true,

Such fabulous technology, I once was without clue

We understand more everyday and everyday we learn,

With more technology underway, may ignorance never return.

 

 

Carole A. M. Johnson

c. August 2000