The Forgotten Schoolhouse

I'm not a poet.

But I took a composition class with some fellow homeschoolers at the age of fifteen - and, well - writing a poem suddenly became mandatory. We were encouraged to use as many metaphors and instances of personification as possible... My source of inspiration became the little one hundred year old schoolhouse at the end of our road, the country schoolhouses all over America. The poem was written, graded, forgotten. A few weeks ago, we took some friends down to visit the old place, and get some photos. It made me remember my poem.

Down the road stands a crumbling

brick schoolhouse,

without many days left to spend.

Nothing to keep it company,

but the melancholy sighing of the wind.

The quaint little building has fallen

into hopeless disrepair -

Creaking, and rattling

with every breath of air.

Many years have passed

since all it's children were laid to rest;

some sooner, some later,

but where I can only guess.

Some on the battlefields of France,

some just a mile away.

It's beyond one's imagination

where so many adventurers could stray.

They were born into a generation

when freedom and tyranny would duel,

But the will to protect liberty

was diligently taught in that school.

With only an eighth grade education,

they grew to be patriots and inventors,

Some paid the ultimate price,

others lived to be wizened mentors.

(David Thatcher, one of the last surviving "Doolittle Raiders" - I took this photo Saturday.)

Their legacies live on,

and may for a few years more,

but what has become of the values

they fought so valiantly for?

Their schoolhouse stands forgotten;

a relic of the past,

And the country that has forgotten it,

is crumbling just as fast.