Robert Hass (#NationalPoetryMonth)

 

Fall

Amateurs, we gathered mushrooms

near shaggy eucalyptus groves

which smelled of camphor and the fog-soaked earth.

Chanterelles, puffballs, chicken-of-the-woods,

we cooked in wine or butter

beaten eggs or sour cream,

half expecting to be

killed by a mistake. "Intense perspiration,"

you said late at night,

quoting the terrifying field guide

while we lay tangled in our sheets and heavy limbs,

"is the first symptom of attack."

Friends called our aromatic fungi

"liebestoads" and only ate the ones

that we most certainly survived.

Death shook us more than once

those days and floating back

it felt like life. Earth-wet, slithery,

we drifted toward the names of things.

Spore prints littered our table

like nervous stars. Rotting caps

gave off a musky smell of loam.

'Fall' is from Robert Hass' first book of poetry Field Guide (1973). It won the Yale Younger Poets prize that year. One could cook from it for weeks, eating well the whole time. The younger Robert Hass from the back of the book:

He looks like he just came back from mushrooming. Or maybe it was something else that 'late at night' messed up his hair.

Poem for a Thursday is a meme started by Jennifer at Holds Upon Happiness. Brona has a poem by H.D. this week.