Tremella mesenterica
five o’clock & the blue coming on
so you walk out head to the park
where the mist is practising the laying-on of hands
open palms pressing downward
– a kind of commission? & 20 miles east
he leaves the house shucks off its brightness
& heads to the woods allows the hour
to start to know him
*
in the lightbox of the café your phone glows
it was by the gorse on the oak
it seemed luminous almost floating
shot from above & you’re pulled down
oak bark fathoms deep drowned forest
pale spikes blue-jewelled sea-gorse sea-holly
vertiginous & at the centre rising towards you
– sea plant? body part? – orange wings
of new-hatched creature still sticky
can’t unfold something surely born too soon
you look it up
fruit body appearing during rainy weather
gelatinous orange-yellow surface lobed or convoluted
dries into a thin film shrivelled mass
capable of reviving after subsequent rain
gut flower awful angel
most frequently found on dead but attached
and recently fallen branches
& you remember the fox
overnight rain matted body
twist of limbs you thought a branch
soft white pearl you thought fungus
appearing during rainy weather
walked closer realised its blind eye
stopped in your tracks
& you still can’t walk that path
*
the park now a black mouth
sodium fizzing to nothing on its tongue
playing safe you walk back by the road
you want to be him still somewhere out in the blue
pressing deeper & unafraid
Helen Tookey lives in Liverpool. Her collection Missel-Child (Carcanet, 2014) was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney prize for first collections. Her pamphlet In the Glasshouse came out from HappenStance in 2016, and her second Carcanet collection City of Departures is forthcoming in July and has been shortlisted for the 2019 Forward Prize. She has an ongoing collaborative practice with sound artist Martin Heslop; their most recent piece, Squall, was broadcast as part of Radiophrenia 2019.
