Dauntless

Dauntless

Joanna Yonder 9/24

No one gave permission
to the last mushroom of the season
to be this plucky,

to shoulder aside the moss and pebbles,
pine needles and duff
in its staunch search for sunlight.

The ground is already cooling,
and on the fringes of the mountains
snow has gathered.

Nothing seems less likely
than the perfect blooming chanterelle
singing of sun
and fragranced like an apricot.

Sometimes the hardest work is listening,
down in the dense darkness of the underworld,
for the distant call of
who to be. How to be
wild, and open,
despite the gathering storm.



But the mushroom knew,
and so do you-

What it is
to push upwards,
inexorably upwards
toward the light.