In the middle step between dreaming and day,

my feet brush the dew from

early morning grass; their tongues of green and yellow

reaching out for what little light seeped

through the motley grey sheets that hid the sun.

As my footsteps meet the living garment of the earth,

my eyes fall upon a single blemish:

the golden-brown cap of a single mushroom.

Gymnopilus junonius , if I were to hazard a guess,

though a rose by any other name.

Atop a humble and frail stalk, sits

a lonely blossom of the underlying web,

the uncelebrated shepherd between

the dead and new life;

for wherever the past decays,

it feeds into what is to come .

The ferryman waits not

at the shores of the River Styx,

but in the fields of green

of the leaves of grass.

Nothing lost shall be forgotten,

nothing gone shall be left unreclaimed.