Apparition

Connemara Wadsworth

Pines and sky frame rippled water in the mid-morning’s quietude. I am alone in our cove, deep in the pages of The City of Fallen Angels when a small rustle interrupts my idyll. A sturdy woman in a head-wrap and long skirt stands at the clearing’s edge. I’m just looking for mushrooms, she declares, her accent unfamiliar, Is that okay? and places a few chanterelles in her basket. After a rain there are many. I’m visiting friends, over there, her hand sweeps across the pond. I know not where she points. My interest opens as she talks and plucks, talks and plucks. I would ask where she’s from, how to tell which mushrooms are safe but like the mushrooms she gathers she leaves as silently as she arrived.