Fall

Amateurs, we gathered mushrooms

near shaggy eucalyptus groves

which smelled of camphor and the fog-soaked earth.

Chanterelles,puffballs,chicken-of-the-woods,

we cooked in wine or butter,

beaten eggs or sour cream,

half expecting to be

killed by a mistake. "Intense perspiration,"

you said late at night,

quoting the terrifying field guide

while we lay tangled in our sheets and heavy limbs,

"is the first symptom of attack."

Friends called our aromatic fungi

"liebestoads" and only ate the ones

that we most certainly survived.

Death shook us more than once

those days and floating back

it felt like life. Earth-wet, slithery,

we drifted toward the names of things.

Spore prints littered our table

like nervous stars. Rotting caps

gave off a musky smell of loam.