What happens to the sun at night?
I ask the four-year-olds 
cross-legged on the carpet.
Marcos confidently explains,
It goes to New Jersey.
April, whose Mom has read her books
about everything,
helpfully chirps,
The earth tilts and you
can’t see it anymore.
Darnell with raised arm churning the air
counters, The sun breaks up
into little pieces and fills the sky
with stars. In the morning
they come back together
and make another sun.

Science and poetry
poised on the edge of cosmic battle,
until I intervene,
celebrate
how children’s minds tilt
on their own axes.
You are creators of stories,
to explain the world.
You carry on
an ancient tradition.

On my way home, I ponder
if we could learn 
to live this way:
Each in the darkness
illuminating
one small stretch of sky,
and then together making
a brilliant, focused energy,
from all we’ve seen,
from all we’ve learned.

Of course you don’t tell him, and he’s young enough,
he won’t know. So you laugh a little louder 
when he slurps his spaghetti at dinner, and let him 

dawdle putting away his trains. You trace the fine 
blend of flesh and muscle of his ears as the washcloth
slides behind them in the bathtub. You wrap him 

in his rocket ship towel, his pink child smell too sweet
to bear, and want to hold him there, grounded 
to this spot, forever. He lets you sing him 

the lullaby that sometimes he says is too sad, 
and you wonder what sad means to him. Your voice 
breaks at “don’t be afraid” because the fear that is baked 

into being a parent clogs your throat. When he asks 
for a train song, you make one up about a distant whistle 
coming closer and watch his face ease into dreams

tucked safely in the caboose. You can’t call this leaden
mass that is your body grief –that belongs to those 
whose bathtubs are empty tonight, whose towels 

hang dry and useless on their hooks –
but anger knifes deep through your skin, rage leaks
from every wound. The madness is so big, he so small.