The Mushroom Gatherers

The hard work of love sealed
in language has stolen me far 
from home, from the fields, 
& I see morning mist rising 
where they borrow ghosts 
to get even with each other, 
harvesting vegetable fruit 
close as we can get to dirt. 
I glimpse shadows smudged 
in trees lining the highway 
where night & day commingle, 
or as a season moves slow this hour, 
saying, Bad things happened here.
At first, the figures seem to be 
staring into earth, like migrants 
who work Florida & California, 
unearthing what we live to eat. 

We know the men from women 
by the colors they wear, sweat 
ringing their lives in gray shade, 
& our bus makes the mushroom 
gatherers with pails & canvas bags 
blur among the trees as if shutters 
are opening & closing, as the mind 
runs to keep up. But the road forks 
here in eastern Europe, & I hardly 
can see faces in the door of leaves. 
The women know where to stand 
in the clearing, how each trucker 
slows down to make the curve, 
& cannot miss yellow or purple. 
He honks his loud bluesy horn, 
idling at the bottom of the hill 
on a thin shoulder of blacktop.