Cycling

We cycle down the smooth neighborhood streets,

passing each manicured lawn in green blocks.

Here the sunlight threads through the trees,

touching their brightly colored helmets

until they are ablaze with light. My children

waver unsteadily on two wheels

like newborn foals, uncertain of their balance.

What do I tell them of the broken world,

in a country that has decided guns matter

more than their lives, where they won't have a choice

over their own bodies, when we are boiling

this planet and everything in it alive.

I watch them careen down the road.

The sky is vast, an open vault. An ocean.

They can’t see me anymore

but can feel the shape of my voice. My children

tremble towards the unknowable, human

and fragile, but for one glorious instant: whole.

Righting themselves, they ride off

into the distance, shouting for joy,

two determined specks

against an endless blue horizon.