Risking the Fall

We walked to school through hedgerows, sleet and morning mist. With ink-stained hands

and pockets full of things we should have missed. We do not seek a padded

path, nor futures kept in glass. But days that bend and sometimes

break like blades of winter grass. Let us climb the broken fence,

let knees be torn and red. For sense is learned by living through,

not warnings left unsaid. At school and home, where chalk and

rain and playground shadows fall. We learn by risking what we are,

not being safe and small. If we never dare to stumble, if we never