Orange toadstools, mushrooms, which are you?
Velvety smooth sponges, full of moisture
nursed from your mother ground,
growing in dank damp dark.

What can I make of you?
Has a toad ever actually sat upon you?
Do you know you are called fungus?
What an ugly name for something
so soft and sweetly knit
with delicate membranes
thin as hope.

Stalked and firm, as tenacious as you are dependent,
you bloom from a rock or spring from a log,
parasite for eternity,
no separation from your unwilling host.