by Dick Westheimer
Dear Parent,
We believe in children. We believe
in padded playgrounds and unscuffed knees
and helmets and a bubble wrapped curriculum
lined with velvet and free from troubled ideas.
We believe our teachers should teach
like painting and planting for their personal benefit,
that residents of Auschwitz knew the trick of how
to lose weight and look so fit, that members
of the Five Tribes, removed for their own good,
got to “pursue happiness in their own way.”
We believe those seeking refuge (whose boats
overturn) might learn to swim, that those
with black-lung get to sit in front of their TVs
in their BarcaLoungers with their very own
government issued oxygen tanks, that Catholic
boys get personal tutoring in anatomy from
respected men in their white collared shirts,
that trafficked girls get to travel the world
and meet new friends.
We believe children should learn nothing
about those pre-teens head-bent in sweatshops
sewing their shoes, or two-year-olds toddling
in electronics junk yards recycling their PCs
or tweens armed and taught to harm their kin.
We do this for you, dear parent
because, we are committed to protect
you from Judgement Day when
Johnny or Susie asks what
you could have done and why,
dear parent, you didn’t.
Dick Westheimer lives in rural southwest Ohio. He is a Rattle Poetry Prize finalist. His poems have recently appeared in Whale Road Review, Innisfree Journal, Gyroscope Review, Banyan Review, Rattle, Ritual Well, One Art, and Cutthroat. His chapbook A Sword in Both Hands: Poems Responding to Russia’s War on Ukraine is published by SheilaNaGig.