To Mycorrhizae Under Our Mother’s Garden

Hyphal tubes,   symbionts,    exudates,

glomalin proteins,  pre-soil,     prevent the leaking out . . .

Fluttered root tips of           padded prickly pear,   sand
under anxious days,           enzymes, gill ghosts,

patched necromasses       under her clothesline,

keep spirit close.    Beneath feldspar,    redbold mica.

Nets of roots,       fate-kept not-death fungal sheets,
steady there,             abiotic mediators,      ones toward all.

Crawling              now     whirred opened cells,

Pleistocene       N-rich molecules              where rhizospheres

stayed still.         Days of salts, stomata, pores in leaves.

Dirt with furry prizes        turned      zero clouds where
chores were done,            to branch near places

she had moods, mendings.   Sewed buttons on.

Ectomycorrhizal fungi, mend her there.  Her here.

Mend moods here.  Pink & beige mold moods,    stay

the feet.   Forgetters,   spun threaders,        where dots

& arcs  host sugars.    Ampersands  of storage compounds,

weaving loves.   Carbon allocators,  micro-essays

of endomycorrhizal          dappled net
of never seen, don’t.       Light carriers,    don’t forget,

fungal tracers,   hold back below.

Tubes & branches,      microbe niche of ground,   

don’t forget her,    earth      that  held her up—