Brockwell, Stephen

Black Truffle

1. Nothing on the tongue more subtle; from the earth,
2. not of it; of garlic, clove, oak, air,
3. and stars if stars were small enough to taste
4. and sprinkle on risotto.
5.  
6. With difficulty cultivated under
7. hundred-year-old oak as the Californian
8. knew: replaced fifty acres of sequoia
9. to make a grove from topsoil, loam
10.  
11. and seedling oak, shipped from Provence across
12. an ocean and a continent by steam,
13. so his grandson could sell the fungal pearls
14. to gourmets in San Francisco.
15.  
16. Rare as honest speech, the best of these poems
17. of oak from earth are not harvested but
18. discovered by a farmer’s hungry pig.
19. No reverence or commerce checks
20.  
21. his desire to devour the tuber whole.
22. Watch the farmer swing a barbed switch
23. to keep the muzzled snout
24. from bruising what it cannot eat.