“Mom had to deworm me regularly.”
Suzanne Simard, Finding The Mother Tree, p. 28
No sugar and spice and everything nice,
This girl ate dirt.
Mouthfuls
of dead and living things, “greasy black rot.”
Voluminous. Fibrous.
The dark fungal filaments
she pulled forth from her tiny mouth
one-by-one tenderly
looped and twisted on her fingers,
a veritable network of strings, symphonic,
a Cat’s Cradle
displayed with dazzling skill.
Now full-grown with her hands, her words, her heart, she reaches out
to offer to the
children of the earth
to slip their hands into hers
to grasp this neural net
to dig deep into the stringy humus beneath the forest floor, to gather with her all our wits
and ingest this:
“chemicals identical to our own neurotransmitters. Signals created by ions cascading across fungal membranes.” (2021, p. 5)
By: Deb Morse
Inspired by:
Simard, S. (2021). Finding The Mother Tree. Alfred A. Knopf.
Deb Morse is a Master of Arts student in Environmental Education and Communication at Royal Roads University.