American Life in Poetry

Let’s celebrate the warm days of spring with a poem for mushroom hunters, this one by Amy Fleury, who lives in Louisiana.

First Morel

Up from wood rot,

wrinkling up from duff

and homely damps,

spore-born and cauled

like a meager seer,

it pushes aside earth

to make a small place

from decay. Bashful,

it brings honeycombed

news from below

of the coming plenty

and everything rising.