Sonnet Sunday: Hunting Mushrooms

Mushroom Hunting

Beware the Fly Amanita, whose cap,
Bright red with yellow spots, practically shouts
Its alkaloids are poison. The Death Cap
Is worse and the Destroying Angel counts
Among the deadliest of mushrooms. Fungi
Are mostly underground, their mushrooms fruit
Of a larger mycelium formed by hyphae.
(The metaphor of the iceberg here would do.)
Mushroom gathering is a risky task.
Avoid anything white with white gills.
Carry a guide book so you can ask
Which fungi’s not accompanied by ills.
A single mushroom is enough for death;
A single fool enough for a last breath.


I just took a three-day break from blogging, not deliberately but because it felt right. And in those brief days I fear my poetic skill has plummeted, as witnessed by this sonnet meant for Sonnet Sunday. Following a little mushroom seminar I attended, Kathleen and I have been hunting mushrooms and we cooked up a couple of Chanterelles the other night which were delicious.

There’s also the deadline for having designed a website, namely today, for my html class. My brain has been like cement but I pulled it together to make some kind of a website. Not entirely primitive but not entirely stylish either.

The increased dose of my new antidepressant seems to be helping me, but I’m not out of the woods yet. Mornings seem to be worst, when I have anxiety and my mind rehearses all its little circles of doom: what I can’t do, what I should do, what I will do and all the rest.

I don’t know if I’m on the road to mental health, since I’ve had quite a few false starts in the last eight months. One can only hope that we got the cocktail right.

Thine,

CE