Young Earth

Adults often concern themselves with children,
Worrying they will learn too much too soon
About the disturbing world of adults.

Certainly, the young of many species,
Including humans, are at risk of harm
From adults, whether familiar or strange.

But do those risks lie really in learning?
Any innocence made of ignorance
Is a source of vulnerability.

How peculiar that human grownups want
Their young to not understand them too soon.
It’s not only that knowledge is power—

The knowledges themselves are competing
For skull island, survival of the first.