I am participating in two challenges this month, OctPoWriMo and Inktober. To make it easier on myself, I’m trying to write a new poem on odd-numbered days and make a drawing on even-numbered days.
Today’s prompt is hugging a tree.
Trees
while I drove north to drop my older daughter at camp,
the youngest asked, “Mommy, is this a forest?”
it was then that I realized I’d raised city kids
yes, this was a national forest
but at this altitude the trees were mixed
with desert cactus, very unlike
the forest I’d grown up with in the east
a few years later at church camp
while I tried to keep all my kids in sight
an elder said, “Let them go. They’re safe here.”
hard to trust that they wouldn’t disappear
or break a leg falling from a tree-branch perch
their first opportunity to roam free
as I did in my childhood decades before
That wish to keep our children safe never really goes away. Your poem catches both the ‘mothering’ and the inevitable letting go, as well as contrasting then with now.
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Thank you for your comment, Beth.
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