Mushroom Hunting

The screen door's slam
in the cool morning
was different than in midday heat.
The summer Tuesday slams
were calmer, dewy and
chilled.


We creaked down the back steps,
ratted sneakers creeping
through the tall grass,
my hands on the wicker basket
we took along.


The mist still hung thick
from the night's heat,
and played with the trees'
young leaves. 6 am with you
in the woods.Every Tuesday
you came to the door,
a fox in your movements,
despite age's tight
grasp on your face. 
Your voice from the 
door jamb telling
me it was time.


And I never complained,
16, in the back country for
a summer. Pond swimming
and frog catching
in the boondocks.


We took a weeded
path and you made them appear
from the air, I swore
for so many weeks.
You lifted them,
called them by name
and claimed them.
Morel, Oyster,
Chicken of the Woods.


Their fleshy bodies 
coming up in your fists,
delicate gills still
breathing forest air. 


The same mushrooms
grew here in the war,
Civil. Soldiers took
out hunting dogs
in these woods,
to find the cowards
and hang them
for treason of
conscious.
I never understood
the dangling feet
for fear.


My footfalls are
the footfalls of the condemned 
men who fled,
and ate the wild bodies
in the undergrowth,
little mushroom sustenance.


I brush the dirt off one
as your leathery hands
find a trove of 
the grey jeweled flesh.
Chew, and the 
body tastes
like rope.


I am here
so I don't desert,
the backwoods-
to teach me a lesson
with every screen door slam.
Every crunching of twigs
and mushroom collected,
I learn to be here.