who suffer most in war, some adult
squabble over saving face, feeling
superior,
accusations made and threats
exchanged,
and the children’s lives, their
dreams and visions
are sacrificed for someone else’s ancient
ideology,
time-worn ideas in need of youthful
fantasy and imagination,
in need of the children’s laughter and
longings,
not in young lives laid down, taken,
or forever changed
by short-thinking old men bent on
selfish gain,
forgetting their own childhoods,
their own children,
crushing now the innocents’ hopes
and dreams,
hopes and dreams full of
possibility, dismantled,
their wings clipped by tragedy and
fear and death,
wings meant to set them free, fly
them upward,
higher and higher, ungrounded,
toward the heavens,
setting us all free to see a better
world, a better future,
mankind working together for good, for
the children
lost in war, working together for Peace.
