School Trip

The 50’s people are in a diorama
behind a Perspex window,
for the most part they are cheerful,
they cut grass with push mowers,
swim in circles in above ground pools;
by and large they are not serial killers.

The museum is new, colorful and shiny.
The 50’s people wave mechanically
at all on-lookers.
A young questioner asks
why the 50’s people are not all dead?
A reasonable question
which the handler deflects
with a long tale about purple dinosaurs.

The kids are getting bored,
handlers usher them into a cafeteria,
where two 40’s people linger over
a tasteless, sanitized meal.

Youths rib poke each other and sneer.
The two 40’s people have no diorama
they have forgotten how to make one,
worst still, their handler died
the same year Barney went extinct.
Copyright © | Year Posted 2025

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