'Price Of Education' Poem by Linda Winchell

Tiny faces with wide eyes aglow
at school bus stops, off to school they go.
Cheeks like roses product of their healthy youth
with their yellow rain coats, and floppy back rubber boots.

Bus pulls up all shinny and new
they step on one by one
while others enter in, two by two.

Like little sponges off to school go learn
what in life another teaches, for their money earned.
Then one day after years of twelve
now seen going off to jobs on trains and cars
in some hypnotic blank eyed spell.

Where is the joy and that rosie glow?
That of their youth I witnessed some years ago.
Does life have to take that all away?
Is this the price of education, that our children must pay?