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