Historically, “The Killing Fields” refer to more than 20,000 mass grave sites in Cambodia where well over one million Cambodians were killed and buried by Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime (the Communist party of Kampuchea) in the late 1970s. These atrocities were depicted in the 1984 Oscar-winning movie bearing the same designation.
Over the years, “the killing fields” has become a more generic reference to places where a heavy loss of life has occurred, typically as the result of massacre. In this sense, tragically, the United States of America has its own growing number of “killing fields.”
Such is the subject of my father’s latest poem.
THE KILLING FIELDS
By James W. Fletcher
We need to take another look
At Columbine and Sandy Hook,
Uvalde, Texas, others too,
And come to grips with what to do.
Those shootings stopped the nation’s heart,
And ripped the families apart.
The tragedies were magnified,
For precious little children died.
They’ll never realize their dreams,
We’ll never see their faces beam
For deeds accomplished, goals achieved,
Or future honors not received.
They didn’t die in freedom’s cause,
Nor in enforcement of our laws,
Nor saving others in distress.
Their lives just taken, nonetheless.
The parents now will never smile
At daughters walking down the aisle,
At sons in uniform arrayed,
Or watch their grandkids as they played.
And not just children lost their lives,
But teachers who were mothers, wives.
Ironic that they chose careers
Preparing kids for later years.
And if you look around, you’ll find
The killing fields are not confined
To schools that little kids attend,
But elsewhere, time and time again.
In churches, mosques, and synagogues,
In Central Park where people jog;
In office buildings, shopping malls,
In fact, just any place at all.
What lies behind such senselessness?
How is it we have come to this?
Let’s ask ourselves, and let’s be blunt:
Is this the country that we want?
The answer surely must be “NO!”
It wasn’t like this years ago.
It may be helpful, then, to see
Just how this madness came to be.
We let the atheistic fools
Eject the Bible from our schools,
Prohibit praying in the class,
Then wondered at the aftermath.
The fathers exited the home,
The kids were left the streets to roam;
And Dr. Spock, in mock of God,
Taught “spoil the child, and spare the rod.”
Important as these factors are,
Eclipsing them is one by far:
Abortion ruled to be a right,
Which plunged our land in darkest night.
As tens of millions babies died,
The nation never mourned or cried.
And sad to say, a mother’s womb
Became a terrifying tomb.
For fifty years, we’ve told our youth,
Ignore this fundamental truth:
Conception means that life’s begun--
A gifting of the Holy One.
We failed to raise collective voice;
We hid behind a woman’s choice;
And sure enough, as time went by,
Professing Christians bought the lie.
Without remorse, with no regret,
For our example thereby set,
Like heathen, offered up the child,
Our moral compass thus defiled.
So when some crazy, gun in hand,
Starts shooting everyone he can;
He learned from us, you might recall,
Life has no value—none at all.
The chickens have come home to roost,
And we are left without excuse.
Except the nation now repent,
We’ll someday wonder where it went.
