If life has any certainty
that certainty is change
For what may seem eternal
may disappear someday
The scope of change amazes
when considering impact
The results are so surprising
as circumstances interact
Even civilizations aren't exempt
Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome
The Aztecs, Mayans too
They all came along and went
some for centuries
some thousands of years
But are there any members left
to shed some somber tears
The forces interacting
leave nothing known untouched
from beliefs, lifestyles, technology
it all blows in the dust
It also applies to businesses
where innovations are rife
Some will simply go away
I've seen it in my own life
I've seen the corporations
with their structure and their glass
being built, then torn down again
as ownerships can change
So even brick and mortar
aren't as permanent as one thinks
Few are found as permanent
as the Pyramids or the Sphinx
No occupation is guaranteed
though they often may seem so
Take the cases of the blacksmiths,
elevator attendants, keypunch operators,
nightclub cigarette girls
Just to name a few
their importance came and went
as changes passed on through
I watched the 50's vacuum tubes
replaced by small transistors
and then by microchips
While vinyl records went to 8 tracks
then to tape cassettes
Now CD disks create the squall
Can't imagine what might happen next
Wish I had a crystal ball
So if you sit back relaxing
with your investments all secure
and smug within your world
ignoring histories lessons
oblivious to change
better open up your eyes
the next one is surely coming
it could be a big surprise
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Author Notes
Anyone who has lived a while has been touched by change, and the speed and scope of it. I captured in the picture above a good example. In downtown Minneapolis, next to the modern Guthrie Theater, and with Luxury Condominiums all around, sits the Mill City Museum. It is the ruins of a once prominent stone edifice from the world's largest flour mill owned by Cadawallander C. Washburn, built in 1874 and destroyed by a flour explosion in 1879. The Mill industry, with General Mills and Pillsbury, had a large impact in building Minneapolis. The broken stone walls and huge millstones are there on display. In my own personal experience my company Unisys started the computer industry, became Serry Univac, Sperry Rand, Unisys, Paramax, Loral, and finally Lockheed Martin, who shut our site down and laid off the existing 2000 employees that once numbered 10,000 in the Twin Cities. The Ford Plant that made Ford Rangers, was closed and demolished. Northwest Airlines, formed in Minnesota was bought by Delta and the headquarters moved. Brick and mortar, even history meant nothing.
This poem is an A L'Arora Poem.
The A L'Arora, a form created by Laura Lamarca. The A L'Arora is named after her as "La" is her signature. "Aurora" is Italian and means "dawn" - "Arora" is derived from this. It consists of 8-lined stanzas. The rhyme scheme for this form is:
a, b, c, d, e, f, g, f,
with no syllable count per line. The minimum length for the poem is 4 stanzas with no maximum length stipulation. This format combines both the freedom of a Free Verse poem, but adds a tiny bit of structure by stipulating the number of lines, and fixing a rhyme pairing at lines 6 and 8 of each stanza. So you have a hybrid here of both Free Verse and structured rhyming verse.
This picture was taken by the author himself on February 20, 2016.
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