Mushroom Arcania

The first secret is to become slightly lost without being lost

and then to work back through mixed woods alert

for a silent crust listening for you and to see this

without looking at it -one mustn't look directly at it.

The second secret is to become slightly drunk

on light winter sun

to filter through these lost bones in the trees

after the hermit thrushes pierce the solitude

by dropping single notes in a declining scale.

With bare hands begin to kneel and gather up

moonlight

out of moldy puckers, knifed across

in solemn handfuls, cut loose

rolling like simple organs in a surgery.

The third unknown is the way home: you have to ask

if anyone will expect you after this,

after stepping into something lost.

You will merge at some point with a rained-on blueblossom

dead in the road like a grey claw wetted and soft

enough to flake into your pocket as you slip by

or more precisely as you slip through

brushing the wet sword fern, the dried-and-moistened bracken

the further emptiness of the old well

in twilight is ponderous: knowing it's there

you could shuffle into that hole convincingly

become legless in there, armless, a body

with no more ambition, fruit located near a black walnut

crowning a lost dooryard: any old lost dream

will do; a dozen fresh eggs in the Hoosier

and a bowl of plain butter. Into it these bruised clumps

borne within secrets, out of melancholy

smoking in a pan, shot with wine, a pork chop

quickening, you need to walk on through

saturated oat grass, under such dark green trees

leaning with their water in the trail: Douglas fir

not a true fir, tan oak: not a true oak, spore in a vortex

nestled in following rain.

You cannot make it home this way,

you are limited to reaching a lone vehicle

creasing an elderberry

just above Maple Creek, which is nothing.