By Thomas Reiter
An opening in oak woods--
a meadow deepening away
from the kingdom of spores
where the earthstar we had looked up,
text and sketch,
buttoned the light to leafmold.
We stepped onto waste ground
drawing us down, the whole way
brown, stunned, a watershed
of chaff. You wanted to identify
what we saw waiting in the valley:
blueness brisking over white stone
though every creek was dry.
I stayed on the bank, my back against
the splintered piling of a bridge,
and was entering time and place
next to the IDs in your field guide
when I heard you call back
that the stand-in for water
was heliotrope, wild
turning- to-the-sun,
and the next rain would uproot it.
Around you a current of coiled stems
roiling blue and green, Raymond,
but before we could climb back
to where the fungus called wood tongue
spoke for the taproots
of old stumps, the heliotrope
swept you away.-
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