Fragile
For a passing moment each morning,
I am riveted by how brazenly we walk through a life
as like to kill us as not:
breathing untreated air,
washing with particles of plastic,
falling in love with strangers,
going to school--
as if the fact that this fragile thread has yet to set us loose
is permission to write a God
who loves us just a little bit extra.
They say that now the children
are more intimate with doom than we imagine.
Their love languages are irony and empathy,
in equal measure,
which I have come to believe
is the most earnestly human
we can hope to be these days.
But maybe that's not doom after all.
Maybe it's the template.
You'll recall the 12-year-old Jesus
escaped his frantic parents for three days
to school the rabbis
with his riff on apocalypse.
This morning, I hurtled north at 80
behind a gently swaying semi,
daring to write this poem on the contrails above the sunrise,
when the words could at any point
have lifted me from my body,
the very one that steers itself through the landmine.
All the while, the strawberries at home send out runners,
and my children, miles away,
walk into homeroom,
just about half trusting.
Because they only have the one choice.
They only have the one world to love.
