Poem
Beauty Gone AWOL
The conspiracy of the unsightly in public education
Where art thou beauty?
Inside these cylindrical bunkers
You’re nowhere to be found.
Which policy is it written
To subject our poorest children
To regimes of drabness
Where bells intrude like car alarms
Every 47 minutes
With 12 years of
Sensory deprivation?
Beauty, where art thou?
Are you missing in action?
On leave?
Where have thee gone?
To the cloister of museums?
The lobbies and bedrooms of the wealthy?
It’s here you’re needed.
Where children
grow up in fortresses
Bereft of music.
Deprived of wonder and gladness.
How can
the violence of the world
Enter these corridors
Without the vigilance of birdsong
Or the immaculate grace of sunshine.
Beauty, can you penetrate
These bolted doors
These steel windows?
Can you infuse the x-ray machines,
Metal detectors and surveillance cameras
With the glow of night sky in winter?
The poetry of flowing water?
Our children’s souls grow old with neglect.
Can you brighten these walls
With their hope
Their questions,
The silenced rhapsody of their imaginations?
Beauty, I’m being straight with you.
It’s getting dicey down here.
More than you know.
A mental health crisis
Serrated with loneliness
We’re at a tipping point.
Childhood at risk
Despair at large.
I’m beseeching you:
Bring Joy.
Bring Play.
Bring Kindness and Compassion.
And not just for the children
The teachers too.
Most of all,
Bring healing.
Hurry.
