From the kitchen, heart of the house,
where endless meals magically appear,
nightly news erupts:
two masked gunman,
baby in a dumpster, bomb explodes at rush hour,
dead of an overdose, sniper in a moving car.
Now a headline surges, coats the floor like farina.
And the going gets treacherous.
After a bad night, when I lurch over
to tuck you in, you’re impossibly bent
among your covers, as if dropped
from a great height, miraculously unharmed.
Later I’ll teach you not to take any.
Forgive my surprise and alarm
when you turn my own wisdom against me.
As Jesse James opens adolescent fire,
somehow I’ll expect bullets to pass right through.
They say a chick recoils when hawk’s shadow
projects upon the cave wall of his shell.
Before his first dawning vision of mother,
she has already failed to protect him.
So I’ll try but surely fail to protect you:
from gory newsflash, from cartoon carnage,
from my own extravagant past,
and for as long as humanly possible,
from the landmines awaiting your quickening tread.