May Golden Shovel #5

source: For Struggling Familes, a Tough School Year Risks Becoming a Lost One

 

The abandoned schoolhouse stands sentinel for

Children who left long ago, struggling

For jobs, for food, for worth, for dignity, whose families

Could not support more children. A

Family of horses take over the tough

Work of managing the fields surrounding the school.

They step delicately into a year

Of your dreams, gallop triumphantly, nuzzle risks

You would not take on your way to becoming

An orphan, a genius, an addict, a

Scholar. Horses cannot bring back the lost

Children, whose lives unravel one by one.

 

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I’m continuing to use Terrance Hayes’s Golden Shovel poem format, as proposed by the Sunday New York Times "At Home" section, for 30 Poems in 30 Days during National Poetry Month.

 

Take a newspaper headline that attracts you.

Use each word in the line as the end word for each line in your poem.

Keep the end words in order.

Describe the story that the headline is for.

The poem does not have to be about the same subject as the headline that creates the end words.