Kelly Clay
DUE PROCESS

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The jump ropes beat rhythmically against the sidewalk.
Children from the third grade play red rover.
Girls in flowered summer dresses spin
in dizzying circles that make them fall down and giggle.
Children from the second grade sit on the top
of the monkey bars wrapping their fingers
and legs around the cold, gray metal
daring others to try and knock them off.
A group of boys chase a soccer ball
towards two carefully placed orange plastic cones.

The teachers end recess
and the children go in sad but refreshed.
Impatient they will be for school's end.
The impatience won't leave them as they face
the long days of junior high where they find kinds
with cigarettes and condoms in their lockers
and the long days of senior high where they find kids
with criminal records, children of their own and drugs

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(c) 1999 Kelly Clay. All rights reserved.

Appears in Schools of Verse: An Anthology of Poetry About School, Fall 1999.