RECIPE FOR LATE SEPTEMBER

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 rains before the first hard frost.

Add anything more and the flavor gets lost.

Greg Keeler has published two memoirs, Waltzing with the Captain: Remembering Richard Brautigan (Limberlost) and Trash Fish: A Life (Counterpoint).  Limberlost also recently published Almost Happy, his latest of seven collections of poetry.  Keeler illustrated Jim Harrison’s chapbook, Livingston Suite.