Magic Mushroom

Magic Mushroom
September 2018

Entering the park
I am greeted by
a giant yellow mushroom
sprouting brilliant from
an ash tree’s trunk,
bursting with multiple shelves,
a proudly swelling corolla.

My first thought:
someone has tied a celebratory rose
around that tree,
for yesterday the trunk was bare.
But stepping closer
I can see
it’s Chicken of the Woods.

Mother Nature has worked her magic
and left
a gift from Gaea
to lift my spirits,
wake me from my worries
and call me loudly:
attend to the world around you!

Walking on
to the pulse of the cricket,
the hum of cicadas,
and into the woods,
my sacred space,
I raise my gaze
to the crests of the trees
and worship.
Surrounded by
my deities,
these private goddesses,
I slip into a mystic bliss.

Quiet titans they stand,
and offer themselves
like models posing
for the artist’s eye,
branches arrayed in
endless patterns
against the sky,
straight and strong
or bent in shapes surprising.

They invite to visual contrast:
light and shadow,
dark umbrella broken through
by sudden sunlit patches.
Such aesthetic pleasures  
stream deep into the mind.

The body too is grateful –
for coolness of shade,
for rustle of treetops
moving gently on high,
for scents of late summer,
dry grass and evergreen,
and moldering leaves.

Exiting the park,
my trance is fading.
I salute again
the author of
all magic mushrooms,
the mother of my titans,
and give thanks.