Our Children

The children that we have
become the teachers that will break us into bits

Our staunch confrontations with the world
pulverized or tested

Back across the bent backs of our parents
and ancestors

as if all the generations were tied to a dock
waiting for us to skip rocks across their bows

in the arctic with floating ice-chunks
or the tropics with its malarial fevers

Our children who take from us
cues for eye-winks or mouth-frowns

challenging the very blood that
courses through them to stand at the

crossroads and march on as the world’s
train whistles shriek shrill beside them

And we’re covered in the mist of passage
as they pass

tossing us a look or two
in passing

God keep them in their groove
for every day’s tomorrow

O Prophet press them in your praise

---

4/29/2007 (from Invention of the Wheel )

Categories: Poems, The Prophet Muhammad (salallahu alayhi wa sallam)