No Children Were Harmed in the Writing of this Poem
by Jennifer Gilbert
When a small child you have never met
picks up her foot to step off a curb
and into rush-hour traffic
approximately thirty feet from where you are sitting,
right now,
idly drinking your iced coffee
and letting the pattern of the metal patio chair beneath you
imprint itself onto your thighs,
and you look up from your newspaper just in time
to see the sole of that one tiny shoe leave the earth,
you will work so hard.
