KAREN HOLDEN

MUSHROOM GATHERING

 

We reach deep into the humus

beneath crumbling layers of leaves

unearth the pale fleshy fungi, as an 

anthropologist might unearth bones:

slowly and with infinite care.

We lift only the fruiting body, cap still

closed and veiled like the fist of the brain,

gilled like ancient fishes, delicate

as leaf vein, rich with life.

This is how it is, how we are

in the world, like all things, progeny

of sun and water, decay, the continuous

cycle of birth and death, of carbon, of time,

evolution; essential, fragile and edible

growing from the dark ground of all being,

soil and soul: our hands, those bones, 

these mushrooms.