Reflections of Child Labor SK
We have faltered since the beginning of time.
Mortals have always gotten out of line.
Defiant roads were never hard to find.
Quickly, ours became a life of crime.
This crime goes unpunished as we sip wine.
We teach kids 'abuse' by abusing them.
That is when lights in their eyes start to dim.
We turn our eyes away without dismay.
We lose them as they go astray.
When a child, growing up in Southern USA,
much of my childhood was much less about
playing in the hay, and far more about bailing the hay.
A large part of the child in me was lost and never found.
Food seeds were planted and then harvested.
Child labor flourished and none protested.
Surely there were child labor laws;
But they never applied to us.
Beans, corn, cotton, and hay were crops of choice.
Laws did not protect kids who had no voice.
We worked hard in ovens beneath the canopy.
It's not that all was bad for this little lad.
There was the good, the bad, and the ugly.
But I can't deny that the wounds of too much
work and too little play made for many a bad day.
Those wounds cut deep, requiring therapy;
But therapy for us was tantamount to heresy.
Such was the case in my childhood.
081423PS
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