Stop, Don’t Stop

by JESSICA PURDY

“The secret wish of poetry is to stop time.” —Charles Simic

I’m walking with my daughter through the woods 
watching her brush dirt from the mucus 
of a small orange mushroom that pushed its way up 
through loose needles amongst the roots 
of the hemlock. She’s cleaning it until it shines 

and I’m marveling at her crouching there 
where we used to build fairy houses, make 
little pine needle brooms, adding mussel shells 
for baths, sticks for walls, acorn caps for bowls,
maple leaves for blankets on moss beds. I say 

well we’ve seen dead and living things. 
The frog I toed at the side of the road 
rubber in its response, the car passing 
nearly sideswiping me. The scream of the crow 
and then the dropped mouse crushed 
just enough to leave a bloody grimace. 

The weather said we’ll be going 
back to the 80s and for a heart-stopping 
moment I believed in possibility. What if 
we could time-travel to past years 
according to the temperature? And she says 
and we’ve seen living things that feed off dead things.

The mushroom’s slime looks to me like poison.
My warning stops her hand from touching 
its skin and I grieve a little.
The trees have begun their gradation, green 
to yellow to orange. How I want to stop 
and take a photo, say stop, but also, don’t stop 
to the trees turning color. Because I think 
I know about the beauty that is coming. 
How badly I want to say Stop, 
but Don’t Stop to this child’s metamorphosis.