Red Mushrooms on a Forest Floor

from Miracle Strip by Matt Layne

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lyrics

Red Mushrooms on a Forest Floor

Late summer. The katydids sing louder
than the seethe of the television, and I’m grateful
for their song. I walk out through the shuffle
of dry leaves, and over the stream that slowed
to a trickle this summer, past where the houses end.

Mushrooms glow upon the dusty forest floor, fiery
as the orange velvet ants that thrive in southern fields.
One of those ants, fuzzy-soft and bright as magic, stung me,
when I was four, right through the waxy-thick green magnolia
leaf I held it with. My hand blistered hot, and my mother applied
meat tenderizer to coax the sting out. Cow killers she called them.

Tonight, I have no comfort for you, my son, but these words:
May you blaze with the audacity of a red mushroom in twilight.
May the feeling of walking barefoot in a broken-bottle world
become vague memory, and when the world squeezes you,
as surely it will, do not despair, but burn, fiery and fierce,
lest it forget your sting.

credits

from Miracle Strip, released August 31, 2022

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about

Matt Layne Birmingham, Alabama

Poet, librarian, raconteur; Matt Layne has been poking hornet's nests and looking under rocks since he was knee-high to a peanut peg.
I reckon you oughta check him out.