In the Mushroom Summer by David Mason : American Life in Poetry

The Poetry Foundation

Library of Congress

University of Nebraska
at Lincoln

American Life in Poetry: Column 74

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

Of taking long walks it has been said that a person can walk off anything. Here David Mason hikes a mountain in his home state, Colorado, and steps away from an undisclosed personal loss into another state, one of healing.

In the Mushroom Summer

Colorado turns Kyoto in a shower,

mist in the pines so thick the crows delight

(or seem to), winging in obscurity.

The ineffectual panic of a squirrel

who chattered at my passing gave me pause

to watch his Ponderosa come and go—

long needles scratching cloud. I’d summited

but knew it only by the wildflower meadow,

the muted harebells, paintbrush, gentian,

scattered among the locoweed and sage.

Today my grief abated like water soaking

underground, its scar a little path

of twigs and needles winding ahead of me

downhill to the next bend. Today I let

the rain soak through my shirt and was unharmed.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Reprinted by permission from “The Hudson Review,” Vol. LIX, No. 2 (Summer 2006). Copyright © 2006 by David Mason. Introduction copyright © 2013 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

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