Mushroom Season

A week of rain.
Then overnight a crop of mushrooms appears
by the woodpile,
pale and luminous, the largest one like a hand
pointing out of the earth.
Fog drips from the trees. The air is filled
with cold urges.

Everything has a voice,
even if low, diffuse—or outside
of human hearing.
And what doesn’t speak
appears as signal: driven up
from the giant tracts of the underworld,

silver root-silk fine as baby’s hair,
creature without eyes or mind—

Fruited, rain-fed, variant, seeping

Moons, velvets, small grave-pearls, trumpets, milk

Jenny George is the author of The Dream of Reason (Copper Canyon Press, 2018). She works in social justice philanthropy and lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.