Underground

i. 

On this wet morning
I feel webs tense and tear
across my eyes, lips, chin.
The spider launches, lands
on my shoulder
as I destroy its silken home.
Wandering, I notice a fraction of
what I have changed—
my feet heavy
upon the earth.

I stop to stare down at the yellow fly agaric
that has emerged with recent rains,
pushing up through soil,
its cap yellow and jeweled,
its stem draped with a white veil,
surrounded by others.
The fruiting bodies emerge
when conditions are ripe
otherwise remain below
as the myriad fibers of their being,
waiting in darkness
to bring color to the world
manifest their silent beauty
continue the survival of their kind
on the forest floor,
the morning’s chosen path.

ii.

Sometimes the path begins
underground
in the silence of soil,
the pungent care of compost
where darkness reigns
warm wetness, a haven
steeped in nutrients
nourishing the growing seed.
And it is here, like for honey mushroom
and aster and elm
that your transformation begins.

For a while words are relinquished,
thoughts calmed. Then the sudden storm
of emergence begins,
and all that had been brewing
stirs, readies, breaks through
skies open and you enter
the memory manifested
from the seed of insight that stirred
many moons ago
as you arrive on the hilltop
under the cover of hemlocks and oaks
each step shaded
in the sanctity of woods
that now reveal the way forward
your wings wet and wide open.



-Roxanne Bogart

Roxanne E. Bogart is a conservation biologist and writer, whose poems have appeared in Tiny Seed Literary Journal, WriteAngles Journal, Silkworm, and Poetry Quarterly among others. She is a member of the International League of Conservation Writers and the Academy of American Poets, and lives in Amherst, MA with her family.  Visit Roxannebogart.com to order her full-length book of poetry entitled All That Sustains, published by Off the Common Books.