Mom, he says,
it’s been raining and sunny,
and do you think the morels
are up yet? We go walking in the field
where we’ve found them before,
but they are not there.
How many times do I walk
in my mind to the places
I’ve found some sense of purpose
or conviction, only to find them empty?
Finn finds a rabbit’s foot in the field,
the leg bone still attached.
It’s lucky, Mom, he says.
We leave it where it is
and let the luck follow us if it will.
And perhaps it does. Today,
everywhere I turn in my mind
I fail to find the answers I want.
But what shows up is a softness,
a fertile field in the unknown where I can rest.
It feels rainy and sunny at the same time.
I can almost feel something deep
inside pushing its way up to the surface
ready to be found in its own time.
So like a boy, to gravitate toward a rabbit foot. Good luck with that. Bad luck for the rabbit :`) I can tell you didn’t have to make that detail up, because it rings so true. What you did with the many places though is magical.
Oh how I love the morel metaphor. I, too, persist in returning to open spaces where once I found rich mushrooms or lucky rabbit’s foot. Sometimes, they’re still there (or their at-least-essentially-so replacements); sometimes there’s no longer any trace.
Raining/sunning. Hard realities. Softness instead of answers. No longer winter. Still not quite spring. The world in tremulous transition. Life can go either way. Or some other way entirely.