Burn Morels

After the bomb fell in Hiroshima,
the first living things
emerging from the earth
were mushrooms,
softly thumbing up
from the numb ground.

There is something to be said
about the stubbornness of mushrooms,
how they grow in ruined places—
forgotten, rotting homes, quiet crevices,
and in the soft burn of forests
after a fire.

After the fires in California
you could find morels
crowding the charred moonscape,
in the shade of fallen firs
or around the roots of pine,
a halo hovering round decay

with coned heads like honeycomb—
pitted black, grey or blond
and blending in with ash and shadow
—their stalks tied to meshed wisps
of mycelial thread
flaking off in fractals.

They go about their wordless work,
crumbling dead leaves and trees
into the earth, nourishing it.
I hope we can learn from mushrooms,
how they refuse
the language of ruin.