Root-brain speculates into
soil, hyphae nosing toward
rot, digesting that we are many-
stranded & one-bodied,
the ten thousand sexes of our
fungal computer penetrating
rock & plant & cloud & animal or
becoming indistinguishable from
what was called individual,
fed ideas & feeding them back,
symbiotic now whether or not
we notice kindness fruiting
each rainy morning, red caps
beside steep branching trails
sheeted into streams as the mountain
drains, it is so full of feeling—
you have to wonder what futures
each mushroom lifts into being,
tender manifestos inscribed in gills,
& how they will disperse—but
they are dispersing, believe it—
long live the revolution of spore!—
the drive to choose with intelligence
how to wind around obstacles
and survive together, mycelial
filigree exerting the pressure
of fifty atmospheres, not monument-
building but persistent, mysterious,
the hungry electrical process of love!
—
Lesley Wheeler, Poetry Editor of Shenandoah, is the author of six poetry collections, including Mycocosmic (Tupelo Press, March 2025) and The State She’s In. Her other books include the hybrid memoir Poetry’s Possible Worlds and the novel Unbecoming. Her poems and essays have appeared in Poets & Writers, Pleiades, Poetry, Ecotone, and Massachusetts Review.
