The Mycelium Radio

In the understory, the damp air holds its breath, a filament tangle bright as frost on soil, a quiet switchboard under ferns, where rain learns to speak in pulses.

I press my palm to a log, feel the slow code, sap answering in a low electric hush, beetles passing the message along, their lacquered backs a moving constellation.

Above, the city glows, a distant harbor of screens, but here the network is older, braided with rot and root, mushrooms lifting their pale dishes like satellite bowls, catching the weather, relaying the birds.

At dusk the whole ground seems to hum, a choir without mouths, without hurry, and I walk carefully, as if across a sleeping tongue, listening for the word that isn't mine.