Poem of Roots and Spores

Veined, my limbs long for the dream of undulation as jellyfish, for a latticework of mangroves in which to play at hiding and being found. They crave the dusk that settles beneath closed lids, respite from the moon’s floodlight parading like a noisy wheel, a carousel on repeat, a steel drum. Cool lengthening in moist earth, pearl tooth of a radish manufacturing roots. Once, after a storm, I reached behind the cauterized stump of a tree and found a cascade of brown scalloped fins. They were beautiful as all fruiting bodies are that grow from lightning: a burst of cells, a frantic multiplying as answer to the threat of their obliteration.