BURMA SHAVE

I sit alone
as the world cascades
past my window.
I'm immobile and sitting here
wondering where
did the time go:
That disquieting feeling so surreal
that you
are the only one
who can feel.
The images you have frozen on film
mere sign posts of where you have been;
Mere records of a past accelerating
of what has been seen.
The images never capture the day
the time will always get away.
Our futile attempts to stop time
with music and images and stories
and rhyme
are sign posts
for those who come behind.
Faces as yet unimagined
bodies as yet unformed
and so we try to talk to them
but we don't know where
and we don't know when.
Like signs attached to old
barbed wire country fences
we saw from the back seat of
our father's car.
You can go near
you can go far
and you can become a star
but if you really want the girls to rave
then you gotta
Burma Shave.

Webmaster's Note: With gratitude to the website, The Fifties Web: Burma Shave Slogans...
"At their height of popularity there were 7,000 Burma-Shave signs stretching across America. The familiar white on red signs, grouped by four, fives and sixes, were as much a part of a family trip as irritating your kid brother in the back seat of the car. You'd read first one, then another, anticipating the punch line on number five and the familiar Burma-Shave on the sixth."

BURMA SHAVE

©Copyright January 1, 2007 by John-Ward Leighton