Revisionist Poetry – Fungal Bounty, v.2

Through the tangled undergrowth and damp earth,
basket hooked on my forearm, I edge into the moss.
Caps—amber, honey-laced, and bell-white—peek through leaf-sheen,
each a coin half-buried in the forest’s palms.

I step slow, nails tasting soil, watching for a tell:
a curl of snail-silver, the pale dust of spores, a stem bruised blue.
Poison hides in mimicry—painted red, a neat white ring—
false fruit that smiles then steals breath.

Still, the rewards are close: truffle’s warm, loamy breath,
the morel’s honeyed hollow that collapses on the tongue.
I lift, I cup, I test the weight of a world in my hand—
the hunt a slow prayer, the prize a trembling answer.

Mushrooms hold both remedy and ruin; each cap is a question.
So I move deeper, senses sharpened to damp and shadow,
and learn the forest’s grammar—where to trust, where to let go—
for in this close, careful seeking, beauty and danger braid.