by Marsha Owens
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| A child weeps while on the bus leaving the Covenant School. (Nicole Hester/The Tennessean/AP via The WashingtonPost |
but we did not… because having finished elementary, middle, and high school, also college, you, thank God, are still alive, and then you majored in education, once a noble profession, spent years as an elementary school teacher and, with experience, qualified to be an assistant principal, but awhile back, you left the teaching profession for good because you decided it was not a hill to die on (my words, not yours), and I retired from teaching years ago carrying my life with me, so I say now ‘thank you, Jesus,’ though I doubt Jesus has anything to do with this carnage that tramples America and children and schools today, that declares guns rank higher on the scale of necessities than education, teachers, and children’s lives.
Marsha Owens is a retired teacher who lives and writes in Richmond, VA, and at times, along the banks of the beautiful Chesapeake Bay. Her essays and poetry have appeared in both print and online publications including The Sun, The Dead Mule, Huffington Post, Wild Word Anthology, Rat’s Ass Review, Rise Up Review, PoetsReadingtheNews, and The New Verse News. She is a co-editor of the poetry anthology Lingering in the Margins, and her chapbook She Watered Her Flowers in the Morning is available by Finishing Line Press.
