What happens when a business leaves a community, after 17 productive years. It's a problem situation with outcomes that stretch into the community as a whole.

Seventeen Years

Seventeen years of loyal service
Out the door with the morning trash,
Save some dollars, remove dissension
The local media, ignores the crash.

Seventeen years of community involvement
Pull up roots and move away,
Spread sheet columns of gains and losses
It’s just another corporate day.

Seventeen years, too much of a lifetime
To be thrown away like yesterday’s news,
Sowing the seeds of revolution
Corporate cutthroats will pay their dues.

Angry bombers and innocent victims
Society bears a burden of shame,
A friend of seventeen years is gone now
The community states, “We’re not to blame”.

Fibril_late; 6/95