The Rooster's Cry - Random Thoughts

I

Dear teacher,

Will you teach the children the joys of climbing trees

To look at birds nests, the pale, pink and speckled eggs,

Nestling within a tightly knit nest of complex patterns?

Dear curriculum,

Will you show them  the joys of chicks that hatch, the

Thrill of flight, anxious parents that watch them dip and slip,

Rise on trembling wings that soar, to seek the sky ahead?

Dear books,

Will you make them listen to the rooster crow,  greet the rising sun

With a Cock A Doodle Do (the real one not the canned one)?

Or tell them - a scraped shin wouldn't matter just the one!

Dear syllabus,

Will you tell your little ones to throw their cares and fears to

The winds, to gambol in the fields like lambs, toss and

Tumble without care,  play and eat of the sweet grass?

II

I would rather have  trees and nests, green fields, and

 Lambs that play than  drab, frightening boxes of concrete -

 Prisons to trap the children and make them repeat what to

Is taught, like mechanical parrots!

I would rather have the rooster and the sun,

The blue sky and the eggs than the mechanical processes that

Churn out copy-cats and conformists, mere robots, machines

That duplicate movements meant to create more of their kind!

I would rather  have the green fields and the cool

Breeze to caress my cheeks rather than the canned air in boxed

Rooms that feed a staleness that stinks of decay and deviousness.

The rooster's cry, Alas! I hear no more and the birds have flown away!

Lambs now gambol in laptops and tablets,

Trees are climbed no more, children have better things to do!

The rooster's cry is heard from tinny speakers, but none do hear it,

 The children are too mature today to climb trees or play with lambs.

III

Don't tell me that children are not children anymore, or they have

Better things to do! If they cannot climb trees or lie in green fields,

Or hear not the rooster crow, what then do they do? Where has

The innocence of childhood fled, if not to pore over screens that

Flicker and spit, ruin innocent minds with loads of information, 

The forbidden fruit that robs the young of sweetness so rare!

Oh, the freedom of childhood, the joys of learning, who a greater

Teacher than Nature can be in whose lap one might

Learn great things? With trees for books, hatching chicks for

Lessons, climbing of trees for exams, might one look for

A better childhood?