It starts with a book
About mushrooms
No, that’s not right – it starts, actually, started
With the mycology segment of
advanced placement biology in eleventh grade
Which I missed, thanks to mononucleosis and six weeks
Of Perry Mason at noon
Everything else just a nap
So, when Wes and Mr Doornink went to the Oregon woods to
Learn something of poisons and spores
I slept like a dumb princess
Kissed once too often by an infectious frog.
Then, fifteen years later, it was the book
I have no idea how I came to read it, but it caught at me
And thrilled me with the idea that,
Although the berries would not ripen until
July, the earliest in this northern world
The mushrooms and toadstools wait like pirates’ loot stashed
in the new-thawed and innocent Newfoundland woods.
And one day, when the berries were still scarce
And small and green and somewhat sour
I looked away from juniper greens and blues
Under the crafty pines
For something strange and new
And found what I was searching for as if
It sprang up alive only once I looked
We all fear mushrooms,
they live in human memory like snakes
They look alike, or similar
And in the same way that we can’t tell
Sometimes the treacherous toxic from the relatively tame
Mushrooms, saints, killers
Look alike as others of the name
Unmistakeable, this particular plant yet I’m afraid
So I bring a sample to an elder who says
“Yep, that’s it. Where’d you find ‘em?”
And we go back to the piney woods together
(leaving our jobs early as brash and open as two
people on a work-related task)
carrying sacks and
the fervent secrecy of children
digging in the backyard for buried treasure.
Once my fright was loosed
like a balloon from its string
I could freely admire what I found
the muted orange, striated thing
Scented with pine mulch and dry springtime sun
An indefinable perfume elegant as a Parisian salon
Flat and velvety atop, smooth and tender
And prized as much as for the thrill of the chase
As the delicate taste of chanterelles
sauteed with fresh butter in the black-iron pan
We emerge from the low-growing pines when the sky
mellows to dusk
Scratched by needles, twigs and thorns, hands bleeding and cut
Bent-backed and arthritic
Mosquito-chewed and cheerful as grubby, intoxicated trolls
Won by hard work, and the freedom of the earth
Clutched to our greedy hearts in paper supermarket bags
our fairy-gold, new-spun and fragrant
in paper supermarket bags
one priceless day in spring.
It starts with a book
About mushrooms
No, that’s not right – it starts, actually, started
With the mycology segment of
advanced placement biology in eleventh grade
Which I missed, thanks to mononucleosis and six weeks
Of Perry Mason at noon
Everything else just a nap
So, when Wes and Mr Doornink went to the Oregon woods to
Learn something of poisons and spores
I slept like a dumb princess
Kissed once too often by an infectious frog.
Then, fifteen years later, it was the book
I have no idea how I came to read it, but it caught at me
And thrilled me with the idea that,
Although the berries would not ripen until
July, the earliest in this northern world
The mushrooms and toadstools wait like pirates’ loot stashed
in the new-thawed and innocent Newfoundland woods.
And one day, when the berries were still scarce
And small and green and somewhat sour
I looked away from juniper greens and blues
Under the crafty pines
For something strange and new
And found what I was searching for as if
It sprang up alive only once I looked
We all fear mushrooms,
they live in human memory like snakes
They look alike, or similar
And in the same way that we can’t tell
Sometimes the treacherous toxic from the relatively tame
Mushrooms, saints, killers
Look alike as others of the name
Unmistakeable, this particular plant yet I’m afraid
So I bring a sample to an elder who says
“Yep, that’s it. Where’d you find ‘em?”
And we go back to the piney woods together
(leaving our jobs early as brash and open as two
people on a work-related task)
carrying sacks and
the fervent secrecy of children
digging in the backyard for buried treasure.
Once my fright was loosed
like a balloon from its string
I could freely admire what I found
the muted orange, striated thing
Scented with pine mulch and dry springtime sun
An indefinable perfume elegant as a Parisian salon
Flat and velvety atop, smooth and tender
And prized as much as for the thrill of the chase
As the delicate taste of chanterelles
sauteed with fresh butter in the black-iron pan
We emerge from the low-growing pines when the sky
mellows to dusk
Scratched by needles, twigs and thorns, hands bleeding and cut
Bent-backed and arthritic
Mosquito-chewed and cheerful as grubby, intoxicated trolls
Won by hard work, and the freedom of the earth
Clutched to our greedy hearts in paper supermarket bags
our fairy-gold, new-spun and fragrant
in paper supermarket bags
one priceless day in spring.