This gentle magic

a mother’s blank verse

I say it like a spell: Look out for cars.
They know already—what have I to add?
As if by saying it my words will give
them supernatural immunity,
by dint of sight, from being run over.
I know they’ll look no more attentively
than they by instinct already would have,
and probably that means not much at all:
they will be having too much fun. But still
I say it like a spell: Look out for cars.
Look out for one another too, I add,
and all but lift my hands as if a priest
administering benedictions. They
will look out for each other more than cars,
each one the other’s oft-sole source of fun
where we sit lonely in a catatonic world
of kids glued safely to their screens
or buckled safely into cars that speed
along our busy road where mine are doomed
to play their fleeting childhood away
amid the traffic’s furious roar and fume.
We are not safe here. Stabbings and shootings
have happened now and then right up the road,
and one day I was wakened by the bang
of someone smashing up a line of cars
as he dozed off behind the wheel. But then,
our neighbour took our parking spot that night—
his car was totalled while ours barely showed
a dent where it was parked just up the road.
And to this day my children are still here.
To this day they haven’t been run over.
Look out for cars. What else is there to say?
What other dangers should I warn them of?
Look out for drunks and stoners, look for poop
along the pavement. And look out for scams
and porn and strangers on the internet—
well, those aren’t dangers in their lives just yet,
so all in all I think they’re pretty safe
to bike beside the busy road at dusk
compared to what the safely screened-in kids
who never play with them must face each day.
What spell is there to keep a child from that?
To warn them is to tell them where it is.
Look out for cars that take the corner fast,
but looking out for stuff online is just
called googling, and that’s not what I mean.
This gentle magic I abjure. There is
a thing called too much safety and it is
the worst of all the dangers in the world.
I’ll say it, but it’s not a spell. Look out
for cars, and look out for each other too.
I cannot keep them in or keep them safe,
I cannot keep them. They live and die
on terms beyond my motherly control,
and by degrees my motherhood retires
from touch to teaching to a silent prayer.
Look out for God, I warn them last of all:
there is no spell to bind his wild careen
around the blindest corners of your life.
Look out, and be run over. Lie in the street
he paves with gold of faith refined by fire
and let the roar of angel traffic drown
the voices of your fears. This is the place—
the only place—you’re ever really safe,
the only place you’ll ever be a child.

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