Of the Fungi

You ask why mushrooms prefer

gloom with a biblical slump.

You wonder why their expressions

affix in such gaudy sculptures,

why they dance so motionless

on their single pseudopods.

All their plotting is underground—

cilia wired to the dynamo

that rotates the planet and sparks

dreams to penetrate the cramped

lair of the universal brain.

No use measuring yourself

against the cup or cusps of meat

that yield inevitable spores

to autumn’s tawny curlicues.

No point trying to empathize

with such a porous intellect.

My ornate language deployed

on such a humble outcropping

should satisfy your thirst for

a New York brand of intellect

dancing out of the Depression

to crush Paris, London, Rome

under tonnage of abstraction.

But instead of returning to books

you step further into the forest

and ask why some mushrooms sport

bruise-red caps while others

dim with potato-tinge, and some

accessorize with peeling shingles.

And what about coral fungi

and giant edible puffballs

cowering like frightened puppies?

What of the boletus, lacking gills?

What of those toxins brimming

on the tip of the cosmic tongue?                                     

 

I can’t resolve this nether world

for you, but I can brace myself

against its earthen deployment,

maintaining a thoughtful pose

until the evening deepens enough

to moot your interrogation.