Picking Mushrooms With Papa In Woodinville
In the moment, it was what you do.Looking back, it must’ve been strange for himto have been a woodsman by trade,with all the customary garb,transplanted into a near-suburban area.Suspenders could hold him there,a hickory shirt, neon pink flagging.Trees have a way of taking you in.You cannot walk into a housenot long yours and expect welcome.Not necessarily. Trees, though,are not new; they have no conditions,and the timing—any sooner, andwe’d have found nothing at all,only leaves, dirt, devil’s club, butjust so, being welcomed: moss,goldenlode bounty, bucketsful, Folger’scoffee canisters full, with two holesdrilled for white, plasticine rope.So, you walk with these at the righttime into trees, with his hands outstretched,and you bend low, at the right time,having walked everywhere but a pathbecause trees do not differentiate,and then, at the house, you spread themon the counter and the family examines them,ogles this inventory, as if to say:how did they multiply in such number,such size, who is capable of suchmultiplication, but it’s simplya profession or ministry, God’s work,no nomenclature he would call it,not even going into the woods, only:here now on the counter, morels,some chanterelles. Tolkien wrote:“In Rivendell there was memoryof ancient things; in Lórien the ancient thingsstill lived on in the waking world.”So, here are busy streets, a gas stationeven, a certain closeness. And up there:endless passage, walking withoutquestion. Robert Service may haveput it better were I to look, or betterno author at all. This has already beentoo much. Having to put it all down.A bucket, but perhaps a multiplicationnever expected.
Fire Extinguisher
The wheels of the four-foot-tall cartholding the red fire extinguisher in the sunon the tarmac to the regional jet are notnew wheels. They imprint on the mindlike an old, rotund stamp, or zoetrope imagesin a circular device of a man with a mustacheon a tall bicycle with one big wheel in the front,one small one in the back, and no other wheelswhere there shouldn’t be. Stationary, I imaginethem spinning yet beneath the height ofthe rolled out jet bridge ramp and the workers,out of sight somewhere having brought themthere this morning just like the day before.Seeing their compact roundness beneaththe hard paint of the requisite instrumentis to know they work, where a tradesman sitsbeside securely in the margins of your mind,in the Steinbeck shade where they yet havea function inseparable from a history, wherewe use them and haven’t replaced themwith digital counterparts, or outsourced safetyto a plausibility test that must be housed inan app and downloaded with corporate approvalbefore consideration. Where we passedwith our carry-ons, before pushing the cart out,the man’s arm must’ve bent and compressed,reached down to tilt the load, and we wouldsoon be blinking mid-aisle, the next slideclicked into place, while wind caught his hairand light passed through his image, protectionbefore it was deemed a directive, notmitigated by bandwidth, that rolled into placea certain heaviness, our burdens, all easeof motions before we made them.
Maybe I’ll Catch a Second Wind
Maybe I’ll catch a second wind. At most,a gentle stream of sand will come down fromglassy slopes and buckle the backs of my legs.It’s hard to remember what was underthem once your feet are in the air, withoutfear of your head knocking a stone, withoutmovement, caught in the suspension of aninertia not yours. I was always glad
that moments like this would come around. There’sa lot of certainty in what we don’tknow will happen, because then when it does,happen, that is, then that’s that, in midst ofitself, the mist emanates without you,the fine grind of God’s how-did-it-get-thereyou’ve no answer for, fresh spice of futureforgetfulness on the ground next to you,on the breeze with what comes later. Maybe
fate’s caravel will take me away, carvethe seas of uncertainties toward calmershores, my feet seen seeping into what haswaited for them, bounding up in spite ofthere being no premise, the way sand willbecome firm from the call to support theycall gravity. Sometimes, the only wayforward is to be borne, not to decide.
See the seagull ascending so high andfast with the clam in its beak it knows itwill drop soon, and follow it down in afractious dive, the requisite plunge. See therein the rocks, in the inches of deep greenthat has diminished in recent times, saylook what I have found without knowledge ofhaving brought it there. A sundered shell againstbarnacles, kelp, hope longer than stilled ships.
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Luke Janicki lives in Seattle, Washington. He has published poetry in Trampset, Funicular Magazine, Ghost City Review, Apricot Press, Quarter Press, Floating Bridge Press, Dipity Literary Magazine, and other publications. He has been nominated for Best of the Net 2025. He holds a B.A. from Gonzaga University and an M.Ed. from the University of Notre Dame. Latest posts by Luke Janicki (see all)
