Looking for Chanterelles in Gordon Woods
A poem. "Your laughter as the woods turn dark"
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Marlboro butts and flies.
Goose calls hemorrhaging the heavy air.
After a day of thunder, we bat
And bluster and comb
The undergrowth for fulvous gills.
With foraging like this, what rings false
Is poison, while the real,
Creamsicle-bright and veined articulate
And redolent of apricot,
Can’t be bought in any store.
Your eyes splay with the forked
Bloodshot red of new fatherhood,
And that cloudbank hangs
As low and heavy
As the evening news,
But each little flare
In the leaves beckons
The two of us, promising
A rude and perfect jewel
To fatten the palate’s coffers.
“A beautiful thing
To fail at!” Your laughter
As the woods turn dark,
Brushing a triptych of mud
Onto your clinging shirt,
And I hesitate again, basket-handed
Along this theoretical harvest’s border,
With no particular reason to hope
But wanting to hike on and in,
Always just a little farther.
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beautiful.