Like the madame who turns a cup rightside up,
signalling yes to tea after all, fall turns
the mushroom’s cap inside out; the dome becomes
a bowl; the fungus demotes the sun
to a taper lit as a test of translucence.
It is more beautiful than any nightlight. Slip cast
bone porcelain, destroying angel
with buttercream gills, she wears nothing more
than a sombrero halo and a half-slip.
It is an old story: moss, like a velvet stole
gone to seed, gathers around a nymph’s pale ankle,
and the forager, eager, falls for it.
signalling yes to tea after all, fall turns
the mushroom’s cap inside out; the dome becomes
a bowl; the fungus demotes the sun
to a taper lit as a test of translucence.
It is more beautiful than any nightlight. Slip cast
bone porcelain, destroying angel
with buttercream gills, she wears nothing more
than a sombrero halo and a half-slip.
It is an old story: moss, like a velvet stole
gone to seed, gathers around a nymph’s pale ankle,
and the forager, eager, falls for it.
Jane Zwart’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry, Ploughshares, and TriQuarterly, as well as other journals and magazines.