Two Gifts of Mushrooms in Two Sacks
       

I didn't trust the ones
            smuggled for us
purportedly
            from the forests of Europe,
weathered, desiccated flesh,
            and in what soil exactly
had these grown
            and who plucked them
—we didn't know,
            or those others delivered by another friend,
some species never tasted
            we kept imagining,
or the fate of the taster
            unknown,
and some with a rind like a cantaloupe
            or enameled, and
others apparently polished
            like a rock in a tumbler
but soft necked.
            I registered many shades
and simulations
            at the bottom of the sack,
imagined their preferences
            for decay, their embarrassment
without orifices,
            the littler ones like chicken feed,
and then that smoke colored
            devil's horn snapped off,
and that flabby ear of a
            shrunken horse,
and that doorknob
            into the storm cellar
where we used to hunch
            during tornado warnings.
Each sack so darkly deep inside
            it seemed that if
the mushrooms tumbled out
            and I accidentally trampled them
I'd be cursed forever
            and wear a mask of measles
and run riot in a ditch
            and filibuster a hillside
and turn into one of their cousins,
            a known killer—.
Each bleached passport unstamped.
            What did we miss
that unplanned summer
            when a week apart these gifts arrived,
each interior of each sack
            like the stillness
inside a small painting,
            a forest folded inward,
enough for us to ask
            what other gifts are wasted on us?

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Copyright © 2021 Lee Upton All rights reserved
from Ecotone
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission