Morels

by Erin Elizabeth Smith

In the fleshy forest, I look
for the new caps of woodfish,
their brainy beaks popping 
in violet and sun. 
This is what we call spring
in the hills, the cut, dig,
pluck of the snappy foot 
at the root. The music of this—
rustle of winter leaf, 
our feet stamping off
copperheads, patches 
of bear corn and nettle.
Even when the hickory chickens
are lost in their own color,
I kick for miracles, 
scare up chipmunk, finch,
fire newt, a world made new
by the sun and the seed 
and the wet wet wood.

::

Erin Elizabeth Smith (she/her) is the Executive Director of Sundress Publications and the Sundress Academy for the Arts and a 2023 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. She is the author of three full-length collections of poetry, most recently DOWN (SFASU 2020) and the founder of the Best of the Net Anthology. Her work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Guernica, Ecotone, Crab Orchard, and Mid-American. Smith is a Distinguished Lecturer in the English Department at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.

Image: Beth Macdonald

ID: Morel mushroom.