Now You See It, Now You Don'T Poem by Patti Masterman

Remember how toys used to fascinate for hours,
Like the spinning top, that hummed like a church organ,
Like it had a harmonica buried deep inside
Stuck forever on a single bank of notes.

There was the etch n sketch, with it's phantom
Now-you-see-it, now-you-don't lines
That dissolved magically, with the flick of a wrist.
Or in an unexpected movement,
That obliterated half of your drawing-
That one sketch so spontaneously magnificent,
You knew you could never recapture it's grandeur.

Then there were toys one never got to experience,
Even if they were all the rage for a time-
Except maybe at the homes of friends.

Things flit through our lives now like micro stops
On a runaway train; we've barely time to name them
Claim them, before they’ve moved on
To somewhere, somebody else,

Whether lost, discarded, or broken down
Before we could get to know them
Like we used to, back when the world still glistened
With a youth and curiosity, that was tireless.

They must surely be buried somewhere now
Under some generic material-
Perhaps topped off with an empty gravy can,
Label now faded..

That seemed to be our mantra for an era:
Catch the gravy train fast, before it disappears
Along with everything else.
Everything that once meant something to you,
Replaced now with the newer ideals of today’s age;
Life is cheap, drink it in quick, before it disappears forever-