SPORANGIUM

From my son’s backpack

I find intricate pencil monsters

commanding fast phallic rocket ships

in sparkling spacescape

and a worksheet from the day

instructing in fuzzy photocopy to

Correct the punctuation-

Number One:

“are you afraid of spiders”

In the adjacent line I read the penciled

hand I love, his

cursive lending neither capital nor interrogative

but space instead,

upending the terms:

are you a friend of spiders

To walk in life’s forest with a nine-year-old

is as fine a way I know to learn, like

the earthworm with its five good hearts

forbears the careless shovel

and a stinging nettle rash

is soothed by Sword Fern fronds