“Fruiting Bodies” by Diane Massam
Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Fruiting Bodies” by Diane Massam.
Fruiting Bodies
By Diane Massam
The teacher tells us you are fruiting bodies
born of fungal compulsion. You are very specific,
choosing fir cones, or pine, while others
borrow bodies that can climb up high, oh
the intoxication, thrusting spongy stems
from emptied eyes, sticky in a salt dune breeze.
Spores burst from above to dust more beetles,
dizzy all the way down. Whence comes that need,
so articulated, like the finding of beauty in boys one day,
just like that, without permission from the host.
They say something canโt come from nothing
but desire does, like a mushroom appearing overnight.
Copyright ยฉ Diane Massam
Previously published in Queenโs Quarterly.
Diane Massam writes about aging, anxiety, and the entanglement of nature and mind. With recent publications in the Literary Review of Canada, Grain, Prairie Fire, and Milk Bag Magazine, she is a professor emeritus of linguistics at the University of Toronto, where she also completed a certificate in creative writing. With roots in BC, Ontario, and Quรฉbec, she now lives in her hometown, Victoria. (IG: @massampoetry)
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