Mary Buchinger
Mushroom Hunting

                                  Once
in the Michigan woods
after dusk when I was a child
    the smell of leaf mold
filled my nostrils and
I found myself inside
  a ragged ring of morels
    I could not see
only feel   one by one
    the spongy cones
as I crawled through
the wet rot
      my fingers closing round
each thin-walled stem   here
    and here and here   another!
       my paper sack filling
  the bounty killing me—
    how could I know I’d
never know such wild issue
lavish earthen outpour
again in my unburied life

<< return to the Table of Contents for New Series #8: Winter 2019, Volume 4 Number 2