Recital by Laurie Kuntz

They are practicing
in studios, poster-walled bedrooms, 
on sunlit terraces, our children, 
learn to paste a smile
on their scrubbed and fresh faces
for an audience of grown ups
who marvel at the lithe and spirited bodies.

On the gilded stage of their lives,
children all over the world 
should be practicing their Epaulè,
but some are taking other positions
in cellars and dank crawl spaces. 

They should be gliding 
across polished floors, 
but today they pirouette 
into evacuation routes, keeping beat 
with the not so distant thunder.