Children

 Because it is nighttime, they have dimmed the lights & now the children

Must sleep, swaying their dark

Sea tumble hair among the surge of white sheets. Their mind a latticework

Of imagination & shifting constellations.

Parents have unrolled & loosed from their plastic day. Tomorrow’s

Soccer game & acting class

Secreted away behind the firmament of adulthood that separates

The child from themselves

The evening’s ritual, teeth combing & tongue champing before the mirror,

The inhaler & the pill is over.

The long back, down, up, forward pageantry of the child’s parading

To bed, is over.

The parents drift past the door of the daughter whose Lululemons, towels, 

paint tubes, small canvases

& stuffed animals lay sea tossed among the furniture, walls & floors 

& whose wild hair waves

& breaks against her mother & past the door of the son whose girl-heart & play, play, 

play betray His father’s good 

intentioned plan to form a man with his bare hands, with thumb-swept cheekbones, 

& fist dragged shoulders

The parents hold onto their Albuteral, Claritin, Epi-pens, Benadryl & nebulizer

& chart by their constellations

Of astronaut, doctor, engineer, lawyer, pediatrician & author. But the children

Have not yet shut

Their eyes and, if you listen carefully enough, you can hear, as sleep gently

Rolls them up

Millions of overlapping, whispering voices reciting the creed of Science Viking,

Smarties expert, & 6 Layer Dip Maker.

Their eyes and quietly, as sleep gently rolls them up, their small voices

Whisper the creed

Of Science Viking, Smarties expert & 6 Layer Dip Maker, Wizard

& Master Cheesemonger