Wild Mushrooms in Nine Parts

This one is in the 2016 Suisun Valley Review

* tricholoma matsutake

This is called tanoak mushroom: twice obscured but resilient,

growing in the manner of a silk egg, barely underground,

disturbing earth with cautious addition, cell on cell,

anchored by threads, veiled,

waiting for perfect day to occur;

this is called matsutake: raw soup mushroom,

wild pepper, voice of other, introspective,

outside the garden,

melancholy truth, easily crushed underfoot.

* boletus edulis

Under Mrs. Aumack’s kitchen door, just as it rains

at last, one begins by observing the tiny red fly standing on moss

--beneath it, barely visible,

arc of pre-emergent gambones, semi-perfect ovals--the fly needs a moment

to insert the needle---to watch carefully;

one begins, everywhere, shadows

under bull pines, heaped red needles

gradually cover fallen branches,

one begins and continues—to look again

at all things or see nothing, the landscape

comes down to the fine leaves

of native wildflowers

protected by a mass of exotic vines

and in someone’s lawn the flawless

twelve inch cap, opening full by noon,

already half eaten from within—

at first one doesn’t see, on all sides,

the patient caps opened by midmorning—

one cannot see them at first.

* cantharellus cribarius; hydhum repandum; c. cornucopoides

Every mushroom is a fact, up and down that slick

Usal road in dead winter; the situation

begins and ends to the tune of 1974 Ford

thrashing up and down long grades,

nothing but distant noise

headed to us through darkness,

arriving overloaded, fungus bouncing

out of half-destroyed station wagon picking up speed

to crash up rutted hill; the rain

won’t end, just gets colder;

thunderstorms melt into the ridge, fresh off the sea,

rain thickens to hail, to wet snow,

the wind is dangerous, we hunker over

a lantern, eating preserved oranges,

--dried fungus in wet air;

at dawn back over the misty ground,

trumpets lining softened roadbeds,

hedgehogs under huckleberry,

golden cups with weeks of age under sword fern,

pale yellowfoot like barnacles on wet logs,

dark wood, clumping snow that melts

into fat wet drops, cold steam.

* agaricus arvensis

Up on that rise, looking down on the broad sea,

the brooding fir trees patiently enlarge

themselves with contents of pioneer graveyard,

white fence, tangled vines, heaped windfallen branches

whereat simple bunnies, baseball-sized,

have crafted warrens and passages. One must

observe everything very closely,

then make a decision:

whether to go off the front of the ridge,

or off the back, into the broad clean timber,

or the brush, left or right, up or down, fast or slow?

One never knows, one must know.

* cantharellus cornucopoides

The old logging road ran through a splitstuff camp,

over ten years old—I could tell by the oil can label—

just a roughed out Cat track where a knoll flattened

into a long bench, big old tanoak having fallen

roots and all, recumbent, sinking in,

absorbed. They clustered on a raw clay bank,

mineral soil under light moss, black lips opened

in shadowed woods, old rails lying about

under leafmold, repeating simple shape:

warped cone, open hole, emptiness leading

inward, under, beneath: to completion.

* morchella esculenta

The old man is waiting by the pickup in the clearing

for me to go all the way around the orchard,

to the spring and back,

to where that timber peters out,

to the corner we used to rest,

looking down the long hill.

The old timer has spread himself to rest

under the chinquapin, looking east;

he waits to hear about the deer herd,

just how many, just how far; he wants to stand

at the head of the gulch looking down

into soft mist raised by sun

passing over rain-softened woods

about midwinter, smelling wet growth.

* pleurotus ostreatus

Behind rusted State Park Boundary sign nailed to authentic redwood

a little trail through the rhododendron and stump suckers

crowding an abandoned road. Go along the rim, flat

pygmy bull pine and brush. It gets a little tight but over the side

things open up. Tanoak mushrooms pop up in the hard ground on top,

surprising walkers in the middle of the trail, or between roots;

all else grows on the broken slope.

One can hear the creek rushing below,

chanterelles in dugouts left by ancient roots,

citrus essence under dark armor of old woods;

life and death appear to be the same thing

where a slim oak log over the creek erupts,

slick oysters, successive generations imprinted

as the stain of death; life crowding upon life,

the inevitable fade into earth.

On the next ridge there’s a bench, it climbs gradually, the woods

appear infinite, if only one had the time to keep going,

in one gulch and out the next, no sign of anybody

else doing the same thing, no sign of anybody

ever doing anything, climbing around the fallen bark

at the foot of a white snag, up into infinite space

created by wrinkled earth and heavy cover,

so far into myself at this point there’s no return,

so deep there’s no farther forward,

those who remember me have other causes,

all I know is hopeful ground: everything looks right when the timber

has filled a canopy and shed layer upon layer

so that nothing breaks underfoot, and broad ferns absorb

any light that falls, and there are no tracks

except those consecrated by ancient widowmakers,

lying harmless on the forest floor, and nurse logs broken open

like caskets of old jewelry, mystic acids deconstructing

patient layers of timeless carbon, recalling lost profiles:

there is life because wood came down,

the limbs crack in heavy wind, swing on tough hinges

the enormous branches give out suddenly and part

from the mother trees

like suicidal bankers on the top floor

wafting to earth

and striking hard;

resulting pieces on the ground,

among the headstones, just over the fence where it feels

like death and life are the same thing,

there is no trail out, only memory.

* cantharellus subalbidus

Death resides in the implied narrative emerging

out of rusted nailheads on faded lumber;

tree stems become

a mass evacuation halted mid-stride, some lean into light,

some into shade, but nothing moves on the ridge,

nothing has ever occurred

on the softness, in the shade, in the refined air

under the generations; I hear a squirrel,

I hear a man running a saw, somewhere down below;

an hour ago I heard a car go up the hill about a mile away;

--stalks and trunks in the half-lit woods--

from far off, the next ridge, strange echoes

emanate from logging crew,

old planks in moss and rot disclose pioneer secrets

left for me: the year of the dry frost,

the year the house was left empty,

decades under the blue-green shroud of doug fir spearing

up from tanoak, the hard-won meadow infringed upon,

old timber anchored in time, above it all,

deepening its roots, continuously green,

a continuous drift of dried needles below,

a place with no horizon, forest of uncertain size and depth,

just when that wind is felt, which had to have somehow

come upriver from the sea, then uphill from a river,

to outline sweatmarks on my back, to chill me

as I stoop among the massive whites,

each peeling a divot of mossy topsoil, still warm

where holy creatures digest entire trees,

splitting logs--neither plant nor animal--

simple truth--neither life nor death--

unusual, hard to find.

#matsutake #boletuseduli #chanterelle #morel