QUAINT REMAINS OF YESTERDAY

QUAINT REMAINS OF YESTERDAY

Cobblestones and colonnades, colonial formalities,
Horse drawn buggies in the streets
And billowed sailboats on the sea.

Soldiers in their blue and gray,
Courtiers in their powdered wigs,
Shakespearean actors in the round,
And sailors sentenced to the brig.

The remnants of another time,
Reverberating through my dreams.

A time enshrined by poets fine,
Of valor and of weighty themes.

Cobblestones and colonnades,
And maidens in their gowns so long,

Young men in their coats and tails,
And minstrels with their epic songs.

Times that will not come again,
But fill the well of history,

The gilded sword of yesteryear,
In all its fabled mystery.

The cannons booming in the distance,
Heralding the dawn of war,
The elegance of Lincoln's words,
The passion on the statehouse floor.

Times that shine with a burnished glaze
Across the textbooks of my youth,
The scoundrels and their wicked lies,
The men in white who spoke the truth.

Cobblestones and colonnades, colonial formalities,
The formal speech, the gesture grand,
The noble bow, the curtsy.

The ladies in their flowing skirts
Who filled the night with romance,
And deeds that shaped our modern age
By grand design or happenstance.

Horse drawn buggies in the streets,
Billowing sailboats on the sea.
The quaint remains of yesterday.
That thrill and spark my memory.

-Bruce Potts
Revised Copyright 2014
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED