When you look for chanterelles near trout streams,

Be sure you only pick the ones whose orange

Matches the orange by the white and black seams

Of a brook trout’s fins. What other color is born

From such combinations of light and shadow?

When you sauté the darkness from a nook

Of pine forest then toss in the crystal of a meadow’s

Deep undercut, don’t even look

At the garlic, much less the salt and pepper.

While light comes boiling up from a dark pool

Where your fly settles in like a fall grasshopper,

chanterelles push needles aside in the cool

Of the last rain before the first hard frost.

Add anything more and the flavor gets lost.