Posts for June 11, 2025 (page 9)

    ~After taking a class on growing mushrooms on a toilet paper roll   

You— body of mycelium— spawn above
my kitchen sink, chaste in a cabinet
spinning toilet paper’s cellulose
to oyster mushrooms. Our bodies—
yours and mine—pass each other
in opposite directions: yours grows,
spores spreading in the moistened ply,
as mine retreats into wrinkles
and tired joints grateful for balm.  

O, to see your coming bloom
now I’ve left mine far behind,
how those prolific pins become caps
and gills, triumph after your
ropeless climb up the nourishing
roll. High above my kitchen sink
you hide—still pre-bloom—behind
cabinet’s door, just as I do—
post bloom—from mirrors. 

The problem was that I was a fungus amongst generational giants.
I was intended to work underground and not in the sunlight.
My spirit yearns to turn tragedy into mycelium and rot into rebirth,
but disconnected from the fungal network I felt only like a tree being siphoned for sap,
violated and purging with thick, dripping sweetness against my will.
Yet when I understood that I was not put here to be a tree,
to withstand and weather the years with a sturdy bark and unmovable roots,
I embraced my vibrant pulse instead, listening to the asks
and consenting to their sustainability, moving to and away from the calls for help.
I was never meant to do fungal work while trying to create oxygen for others standing still.
I am umami and psychedelic ego death and the umbrella for fairies.
I may not be pretty or last for too long in one place,
but I am a good mushroom and the world needs me to be who I am.

There’s a kind of blessing
in the steady rain
slapping the leaves
streaming in the gutters.
I quiets us.
The darkness and the damp
keep us inside.  We take
comfort in our dryness,
in our shelter, where we can
turn on a lamp,
make a pot of tea.

I went outside predawn to see
the promised strawberry moon
but aimless haze hid it from me.
Then I heard the birds, their songs
lacing the dark with unqualified zest
in secret codes that every bird knows
because inside and outside is the same.  

for E

A spider has eight legs
but no map.
Still, it walks the wind
like a line of thought
unraveling toward form.
The seeds fall
by gravity’s grace-note,
the lean of a slope,
the hush before June.

Some things root
where they shouldn’t
and still bloom
like they mean it.

You said, “there’s a wild order,”
and I believe you,
because the night sounds like it’s listening,
because a child sleeps
through thunder,
because the moon knows
when not to be full.

Tapping out beats on the desk—
triplet riffs on finger drums.
Building a framework for plot,
character and sing along.

Sometimes—no gut punch required
Sometimes it doesn’t belong
seven lines short of a song.

is a story told
by the wind, a bird, a poet                                    
each releasing their genesis             
into the unsuspecting world
letting faith divine                
which fallow patch                       
to call home                                                                                                                           

                                            For all the seed planters    

Transposing the thoughts pinned

There is no road map
for this.
We laid it all out last night
spread all of our cards on the table with both hands
a collection of memory, grief, regret, and wondering
and now
they just lie there.
Tonight’s full moon is a lunistice
    – a lunar standstill – 
suspended
between
when we were married
and 
wherever we go now.