MushroomExpert.Com

Lying on My Back in the Assunpink


by Rod Tulloss


Small clouds from the southwest slide
across pure blue and a higher, slower moving haze.
In the cool morning, with dew-soaked shoes,
I lie on my back where red pine grove
goes to birch, oak, maple, and sumac scrub
and can't remember the last time.
The duff is warm under me, warmer than the morning.
I'm so still, heartbeat shakes my eyes; and
clouds pulse; one, an open-mouthed dragon,
milks the blue sky's teat with stiff arms.

I've scuffed up a clump of moss:
a long-legs inches over the coarse terrain,
needles, and newly dead leaves--its
seedlike body moving up and down.
Quite often it loses its footing.
I expected more sureness from the not human.
All the time, I look to be taught something;
and all the teachers I elect are stumbling,
going south, dead on the road, losing their leaves,
blowing themselves out over the North Atlantic.
I find their yellow feathers in the barrens
and give them the wrong names. I
am not talking about being stupid at Biology.

"Boys!" said Mr. Hoskins in the middle of trig,
"I just told you where to go to get free ice cream!
Look at what happens when you don't pay attention!"
In the stem of an orange bolete, a large brown slug
eats into wounds the air turns turquoise.

                                                                    16.x.85



Cite this page as:

Tulloss, R. (2008). Lying on my back in the assunpink. Retrieved from the MushroomExpert.Com Web site: http://www.mushroomexpert.com/tulloss_01.html

© MushroomExpert.Com

poem poetry