Heavy thatch of leaf and needle,
sun-mottled also,
so the eye you need to find them
almost always fails.
But when you do, their dark knuckles
rucking up the duff,
their airy reticular brains
bobbing in the air
and breathing a sexual musk—
after that they’re everywhere.
Your grocery bag grows as heavy
as a child, and limp,
as if plucked up they could only sleep
and dream, of how the sun
they had yearned for awaits them
in the butter’s slick
and a skillet’s sublunary
bed, where they’ll sizzle
from fungal unto meat
which you will take and eat.