Mythos

Even as she sleeps,
she humanizes everything,

hearing October outside her window
gusting minuscule whirlwinds,
rustling flames of maple leaves,
and disturbing sequestered mushrooms
        (low, crouching in the damp mulch)
their fat basidium domes nodding.

Winter coming coaxes everything,
even old griefs, into hibernation, stiffening
the branches of the dark maple trees
so that they tense away from their trunks
and wail moaning sounds that blow
inside the room and invade her dreams,
always the leaves outside chattering,
        sputtering and shifting

like the images in her head contending—
minion to the daze and greenness
        of the first Adam,
until finally her spirit, like taproots, burrows deep
into the center of it all
where she can enter some unnamed mycelium
of her own and taste, but only cautiously,
the pungent spores that dislodge
from anger and long years.

Disturbing nature and crying out—
        brave as old Job
        she is—specific and not peculiar,
daring the process of knowing,
listening for the voice that comes from the wind—
even as it shifts—

always her surprised self waking.