Juvy

Young felons,

When adult authority shelter pushes

Back bad beginning, bad

Following, opening space free

From need for continual self-defense

Allow themselves sometimes

Painful seed into hurting ground,

Humanity's softness, to be pushed

And when cruel adult bird doesn't from planting-place pluck it,

And when there's no empathy drought

And when he's able, at planting-place, scrambling desperately, out of more-desperate hope his memory of the exact spot to cloud

Then sometimes green shoots

Of childhood

Jump from the ground

---

G.A.Mackenzie

02 - III - 2003