Photo by John Mccann on Unsplash
With Love, I Fall
Looking deep into my child’s eyes,
I see both my ancestors and
my descendants, I fall
into a meditation about Mother Earth,
our universal ancestor, and her
potential fall.
Will these cherished future children know
the beautiful hues
of a mid-Atlantic autumn
as leaves change colors and then
fall?
They surely will carry an even heavier
load of the climate crisis than I do, however
could that make them more
present to the surprise
of a frost on green branches, which are
unwilling to let the extra weight cause them to fall?
I imagine their mouths will not hang in disbelief,
like my parents did,
as I recount
that rainy season in the mountains of Peru,
when the rain never ceased to fall.
Or when I describe how I cried
over the peonies, during years of heat waves,
when the temperatures shocked the blooms
and triggered every pink petaled head to fall.
And what about our varied pollinators?
Will their descendants even exist?
Will these small creatures know the thrill of a leg
so full of pollen that flight causes some to fall?
If the pollinators do not have descendants, then
surely mine will never know the joy
of a fresh berry, ripe on the vine in the front yard,
merely touched, caught by their hand as it falls.
I come back to the present moment
and behold my child again,
my soul,
hopes, prays, pleads,
that they will grow to know our Mother,
and in love,
fall.