After the Rain

In search of strangeness I slow walk uphill
pines, birch, maple, ash, August companions
old wooden basket on my arm, eager
to gaze on late summer fungi's oddities

Some may be edible, some could be poison,
childhood fears of strange plants rise
   crossing the street to avoid huge turning sunflowers
   horror of creeping mold on an orange 
   corn plants so thick and tall they sliced my arms

But science says mushrooms aren't plants at all
   more animal, like us
unable to make their own food
   like the self-sufficient rose and cabbage
this does not comfort me

Suddenly they're everywhere

One's laquered red with orange gills
another rust-orange, stem pure white
a cluster of thin-tubed fingering pipes
beige-skinned, no more than three inches tall
here's an eight inch stem with umbrella cap,
two ruffly yellow dancers, gills striping down stem,
a pair of dry, thin-skinned beings, 
caps' beige texture like best kid leather gloves,
delicate skin collar 
protecting bleached coral gills,
but strangeness stops me at
four moon-blue creatures, round-edged
like glowing biscuits, pale, squat,
assured among pine needles

All along the downhill path
tiny dark red mushrooms,
stems almost wiry emerge like imps,
shorter than a red eft's length

the twelve little newts I've seen
among the pine needles
are just as strange 
and yet, poison or sweet,
we're all cousins