Mushroom Hunting

My daughter is a hunter.

A searcher for all things

Creepy and crawly and growing.

Everything in the forest

Has a pulse and a beat

And my daughter can hear it.

She can smell it, feel it,

Her young senses attuned to look for anomalies in the world around-

Hoppy friends and alien looking plants,

Mushrooms of every shape and size and color.

My daughters body doesn't stop moving-

Nor her mouth-

As we wind down the trail beside our house,

Beneath the ceiling of green and brown,

A well worn path watched over

By these mammoth plants stretching

Towards the sun.

My daughter copies them,

Stretching up in body

Stretching outward in mind,

Her lips telling me every sweet and savory detail

Of the joy that she is finding,

Hunting here in the woods.

When our day is done,

When we have washed the forest from our hands and feet,

When we have tucked up together

Safe and warm in our family bed,

When she cups her hands around my face,

Recharging herself from my touch,

And I from hers,

I am home.

As my daughter rides the lull of my voice

Into a sweet and easy sleep,

I lie awake.

Someone else is here,

A stranger standing next to us,

Another child awake in the night,

Aroused by a nightmare.

She stands by our bed,

Too afraid to ask to come in.

She wants to know if it is safe here.

I lift the covers,

I reach out my hand,

I draw her into the the warmth waiting for her here,

This steady and unrelentingly

Comforting

Constant place that I have been so blessed to know.

I pull her in close,

Look at her face in the glow of the nightlight.

She is me, of course.

My inner child,

Too afraid to ask for help.

Too hurt to believe

That salvation would ever come in the night.

I look on her face,

And it feels impossible

To ever forgive myself

For the ways I could not save her.

Regardless she is here,

Pulled tightly to every part of my that wants to push her away.

She is home, finally safe, this inner child.

I am not a perfect mother,

But there is love enough here for all who need it,

Even for myself.

Perhaps tomorrow when we wake

My daughter and I will once again be

Mushroom hunters;

And when we collapse into bed once more,

I will hold her tight,

I will cover us in these tiny acts of salvation,

These feats of forgiveness.

I will do my best to rectify

The injustices

The sins of the fathers;

I will enrobe us in a blanket of the love of our own making.

I will make home wherever

We need it to be,

I will wrap my soul around

Those I Love,

I will make a shelter from my compassion.

No heaven will ever surpass

Mushroom hunting with my daughter,

No work so taxing as the intricate act

Of loving myself enough

To love the child in me long dead.

Yet the two collide,

Out here on this path through the woods,

Where death is consumed by the unspoilt act

Of living,

Where we are home.