04/17/26 To be human

There is a small ramp in the street.

Plywood, and an old tire pressed beneath it.

You can tell, at once,

it was made by a child.

It leans a little.

It asks for trouble.

A broken limb, almost certainly,

waiting its turn.

And still

I would not go to them

with warnings in my mouth.

Because there is something here,

wise and bright

the way childhood embraces toward risk

as if it knew.

Not a hunger for harm,

no.

But the reaching out

to where the edge might be,

to where the body says enough,

to where the mind trembles

and then steadies.

It is not the bone that breaks

that shapes a life.

It is in the actions that made it.

The gathering of scraps,

the dragging of wood into place,

the lifting, the trying again.

The small, unwavering certainty,

that this will hold.