Good Bones, by Maggie Smith

Raising children in a world at least 50 percent bad. It's not rich language here but sentiment and the churning way the sentiment is said. Wow.

Good Bones

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.

From The Poetry Foundation

Chirp, chirp. 

Posting one of my own. For my son when he was a baby.

Tucked In

Moon head,
you pearl the world.
You opalize,
you sheen with green
the now I tend.
You are my prize.
Jewel,
I would polish you,
engrave a plaque
and label you
my son,
my perpetuity,
my eon.

But you're not rock.
You're mouth,
you're breath
unfailing,
soft as footsteps on a rug.
And you are clear eye
wide as love
that guards me as I move
from door
to shelf,
from shelf
to drawer,
to you.

And you are
many-splendored lobe,
vellum nub I tug
between my teeth
and you are nape
and nose
and springy cheek,
warm enough to bite,
boy-sweet bun face.

Some distant night from now
the lack of you
will lope into this room.
And you'll be gone.
But I'll know how
I stroked the first white swirls
upon your head,
too fine for working hands,
so I touched them
with my lips
instead.