by Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate
Those of us who have hunted morel mushrooms in the early spring have hunted indeed! The morel is among nature’s most elusive species. Here Jane Whitledge of Minnesota captures the morel’s mysterious ways.
Morel Mushrooms
Softly they come
thumbing up from
firm ground
protruding unharmed.
Easily crumbled
and yet
how they shouldered
the leaf and mold
aside, rising
unperturbed,
breathing obscurely,
still as stone.
By the slumping log,
by the dappled aspen,
they grow alone.
A dumb eloquence
seems their trade.
Like hooded monks
in a sacred wood
they say:
Tomorrow we are gone.
Reprinted from Wilderness Magazine, Spring 1993, by permission of the author. Copyright 1993 by Jane Whitledge. This weekly column is supported by the Poetry Foundation, the Library of Congress and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
