Contemplating My Failings on Nature

by Amy MacLennan

I don't write nature poetry.

If I open my drapes and watch

the sun dip behind sage hills,

how can I say the sun is like something,

or something else is like a sunset?

Even when I'm out in it, nature,

walking in the wetlands, maybe,

I don't feel the need.

There might be throngs of ducks

biting at water, chattering their bills,

and the sound is rain, or

from a distance, I notice

drab pelicans stock-still in the marsh,

their hulking shapes like Viking ships,

and it doesn't matter. That is no

metaphor. But sometimes

I must admit, when I'm home

and the news is on, I learn the oddity,

a mean truth. Early rains of winter

bring mushrooms, and every year two

or five or nine people (bored cooks,

amateur botanists) eat

a deathcap by mistake. It takes days,

but the toxin often wrecks the liver

before any symptoms hit.

One kind looks very like another.

This I understand.

(First published in Gingko Tree Review, October 2003)