I Write Like Mycelium

I write like mycelium.
Sadly, I’m a fungus of chaparral,
of an Italian prairie forest.
A failure as a parasite,
an opportunistic saprotroph instead,
I don’t dare scrape up a storm
or shake trunks for falling leaves.
Only sometimes a season
I bear fruiting bodies –
so where’s the inspiration?
For the soil, dripping rain?
Right now I’m not dead,
but listless and unharnessed.

I crave a mushroom block
under a cloche on my kitchen countertop,
consistent nourishment, spray bottle humidity,
so I’ll give and give, unstubborn,
and when my spores are depleted, easily replaced.
Can I discipline and mold myself that way?
Farm before foraging,
algorhythm over luck,
with just as much providence.
Cultivating love won’t make me a fake.

Maybe even my wild filaments can creeping-hug
square miles of Earth’s moist crust,
and fruit wherever they stretch.
Expanding into a massive organism,
useful, satisfied, an unglimpsed extraordinaire.
I can stay here and still move on.

Just write.
Just stick new hungry fingers into the dirt,
and you’ll witch the water eventually.