I'll bet you can remember, if you really want to try,

how imagination prospered and fantasy would fly

in days of early childhood when some fertile make belief

saw kids make use of sunlight before night became a thief.

Most little girls had dollies with a house and contents real

and boys collected swap cards and learned to make a deal.

High flying kites or marbles or a rocking horse to ride

saw Cowboys and the Indians race across the playground wide.

A cubby house of cardboard or a billy cart downhill, were projects needing friendship where memories linger still.

Remember how the Pepper trees invited us to climb and how we counted pennies spent each year at bonfire time.

The Tom Thumbs and the Bungers and the rockets set in sand

called all the neighbours in for fun on someone's vacant land.

The comic books like Ginger Meggs were a colourful display

and if you ever find one it is worth a mint today.

Camps and picnics at weekends, sausage charred on forky stick,

catch a crayfish on a line, watch the claws and be real quick.

The gravel yards and sand pit farms with fences, dams and roads

found tricycles and tractors moving engineers' large loads.

Skipping ropes and hopscotch squares guaranteed to stir the dust.

When Mum called out to “Wash those hands”, the Solvol was a must.

Snakes and Ladders, Ludo, Draughts were some common board games played

but techno kids today will say “How could you be so staid?”

With their computers and their I phones and gadgets electronic,

their world is ever changing at speeds considered sonic.

Their day is full of buttons, they are programmed by the hour,

lost to social interaction, seduced by Facebook's power.

by Kevin Pye