10 Poem: The Lesson Learned     Many years ago I came across a book in a bargain bin at a store in downtown Toronto (Ontario, Canada).  It had a black, glossy cover, and yet it emanated something even more ominous than its foreboding jacket.  I picked it up and the first picture I turned to was this one -- a two-year-old girl with no hand.  Her father, the caption stated, had cut it off.  Few things since have had more of an impact on me than this photograph.  I can’t fathom the depravity of this act, but we have to live with the knowledge that this sort of thing has happened, happens still, and will continue to happen to beyond the hundreds, the thousands, hundreds of thousands, and even the millions of children.  And we ask, “Why?”      The Lesson Learned            “If you touch that, I’ll cut off your hand!”      She touched - the cookie jar? the shelf ornament of shells and sand?      “I warned her!”  (it was a command).      So two-year-old Sonja Peterson had to learn her less-on                                                                                of less-a-hand                                                                            from less-than-a-man;      and now,      when a child’s crayon      strokes,      few      can see      how close she draws      to deity.      Oh, Unbeholder,      were not you and all      infant      even small      in the child nearness      possess they now      before our fall?      Would it be      the peach      or the pit      that conceived      the greed      good men      good women      did they know?      when their minds      snapped                                                           and its mucus man-o-war     ranted and raved?        You know?     the fang it is     makes many     depraved. Poem Copyright © 2001 by Paul Anthony Belfiglio Photo by: United Press International