Birthdays Like Chanterelles in Golden Light

by Mary Elder Jacobsen Issue: Fall 2016 Special Issue on Forests 
Sonnet for a friend, on reaching 70
Some days, they crop up right in front of you.
Easy. Quick. Done. And once you find one, there,
and luck is with you, here, another one pops into view.
You just can’t help but move toward where they are.
Some days, the foraging bewilders you—
the uphill trudge, the path unclear, dried leaves
of seasons past like waves you’re wading through.
But then you navigate between the old-growth trees
and make your way toward undiscovered treasure,
where northern evergreens have raised their needles up
to stitch the treetops and blue sky together
to knit a shawl of open weave that lights you up,
and all at once, you see the search for what it is—
a chance to find yourself, aglow, in old familiar woods.

Mary Elder Jacobsen

Mary Elder Jacobsen’s poetry has appeared in The Cincinnati Review, GMR Online, The Antioch Review, Southern Poetry Review, and The Greensboro Review, among other venues. She holds an MFA from UNC-Greensboro and an MA from The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, where she was a Teaching Fellow. She is co-curator of the reading series Words Out Loud: Poetry & Parables, Fantasy & Fables in conjunction with Art at the Kent. She lives on a hill above a lake in a pocket of wild woods in rural Vermont with her husband and son.

Fall 2016 Special Issue on Forests