Lessons Learned In Public School Poem by Stephanie Eve Kane Arado

Lessons Learned In Public School



My blond, blue-eyed miracle folds her angel wings
Into a Disney themed book bag
Where lunch ladies are omnipresent overseers of playgrounds.
Time molded trauma still resonating from steel monkey bars
Where kids fell, yelled and flung insults like plastic sand toys
Wearing stylish, designer first day of school outfit
Quietly adorable, with agile kick,
my little angel will not be excluded
Cuz I know Youthful popularity hinges
On immediate communal acceptance
No limp aqua collars or bargain fabrics hint at shabbiness
A 164 box of Crayola crayons, the latest Mead folders
And a designer pencil case.
Hallmarks of her well adjusted personality
A little light haired angel and her new pencil case enter Jr. High.
Thrilled by video gamer’s tales, she spends her preteen years in arcades
Mother still refuses to buy XBOX.
Hmmm
Perhaps the public school is not the best environment
to train a Modern Woman
Maybe we will become missionaries
And School will be in Zimbabwe
A heat soaked jungle surrounds a white washed school house.
Ancient native sounds rise from drummers
Women wrapped in bright colored cloth
Send daughters in starched white blouses
Still not sure why they should go
White missionaries say they should go
So many go
AHH
AHH
Wailing out laments in the night for brothers, sisters dying of Aids
My daughter and I are here to minister to the suffering.
Teach them about God, Love and Sacrifice
Falling on their knees in the dust
They worship and ask God Why
They may not know about Love.
Sacrifice surrounds them
Like venomous snake jaws
Squeezing out vibrant survival stories
Kept alive by the thin white shirt wearing
School girls. My daughter among them.
Inspecting each other. One very white and the rest very dark.
Looking at the colored cloth and the way each kick a ball
My daughter may gain an edge
with her designer pencil case
Sent from her Nana back in the States.

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