Forsaking Our Future

I wrote this poem some time ago about our governments handling of education.  I continuously hear from both sides of the aisle that in order to strengthen our nation, we need to invest in our children’s educations.  Well, I’m sure that I am not alone in voicing disgust with our elected officials.  In every budget discussion, you will hear them crying to reduce funding for public education.  I’m sorry, but you can not invest in education while cutting its funding, it does not work.  There are many, especially on the right, that would like to see public education destroyed in favor of privatization (if they had their way everything would be privatized), but myself, my parents and their parents before them as an example, all are/were products of a public education and have done quite well for themselves just as many of you probably have.  This piece is my way of voicing my frustration with our system of partisan politics using a farming analogy.

~~

Crops lays abandoned,

Overrun with the sprawl of weeds.

The young ripe for the picking,

Left to rot in the noonday sun.

Government touts the virtue of our crops,

Pleading for us to do more,

While refusing to help cultivate.

“It’s just too expensive.”,

Saying we need to invest more,

As they chop, chop, chop,

Down the ivory halls.

Instead we placate our appetites,

Feasting on imported produce from distant shores.

Why do we not sow our own?

The seeds lay before us,

Waiting for the planting.

All the while, seasons come and go,

Leaving sun swept earth,

Arid and untended.

~

~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~

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