Dear Dana,
I climbed the ridge to look for a poem
& came back with supper instead:
five pounds of chicken mushroom,
freshly sprouted from the end of a log
& dripping with moisture.
A couple of rove beetles scrambled
in & out of fissures as I began
breaking off hand-sized fans
& nestling the boneless yellow flesh
in a shopping bag. In this supermarket,
the shelves themselves are edible.
Red letters on the bag said
THANK YOU THANK YOU
THANK YOU THANK YOU
Have a Nice Day.
Looking in at the bright crop, I felt as if
I’d raided the crayoned worlds of first graders
& lifted the sun from the top left
corner of every drawing.
I left a little behind for the beetles.
__________
The beginning of a planned correspondence in poems with Dana Guthrie Martin, my co-conspirator in the new Postal Poetry venture. If it goes O.K., we may branch out and correspond with other online poets this way, too. And we hope to inspire imitators. Weblogs seem like an ideal medium for this kind of exchange.
Cool idea! I wonder how the correspondence will affect the experience of writing the poems.
I should probably be commenting on the poem and/or the concept of corresponding to others in that form, but I’m too fixated on that gorgeous mushroom.
Brilliant poem. Really, brilliant…..though those fungi are giving me the shivers. I like the idea here too.
I really enjoyed the last stanza. It’s a magnificent fungus. i saw ain interesting rove beetle yesterday – nice co-incidence one popping up in your poem!
Beautiful photos of the fungi and moisture.
Enjoyed the poem.
The part about the “Thank you” reminded me of finding one of those “thank you” stickers (the ones they put on large objects at the check-outs of grocery stores) on the snow in the lane here at the farm on a very bad day. I gave the “thank you” an Elvis voice (Thank you, thank you very much) and it made me laugh right when I most needed that to happen.
Wonderful poem and photo. I like the idea of a letter poem. Often, if I can’t fall asleep, I write imaginary letters in my head to different people I know. It’s nice to think about someone specific when you write, someone who you know would be enthralled by your words.
What *is* chicken mushroom?? It looks like pizza growing on a tree. Amazing.What does it taste like?
I like the poem and the project.
Natalie – See my post from last year, Tastes Like Chicken.
christine – Interesting comment, considering the subject of Dana’s poem in response.
bev – We get a lot of balloons up here, and sometimes the messages on them strike me as funny in the same way – like ironic messages from on high. Especially when they say things like “congratulations on your retirement” or “happy birthday.”
CGP – Cool. Yeah, I struggled for a way to describe the weird recurved abdomens of rove beetles, but in the end I thought the poem was getting too overloaded so I left that out.
Jo – Thanks. It’s interesting to hear the range of reactions that photo provokes!
Andre – Hey, thanks for stopping by. (And for getting to Dana to start blogging back in 2005 – she told me about that.)
Peter – It will be interesting to see. For one thing, I expect that it will give me more practice in writing poetry in the past tense.
Cool idea. Makes poetry feel easier, a natural form of communication between humans.
Jeez, just went back and saw that Peter left almost the same comment. I didn’t plagiarize, honest I didn’t!
I don’t think it’s the same comment at all. But thanks in any case, and stay tuned. I believe we may be broadening this venture soon.