Dewy Mushrooms

A dewy forest of moons,
a multitude of mushrooms,
soaks in the weight of dawn.

It’s snowing spore confetti,
cheerful colour splashes:
crimson, ochre, cream and rust.

Puffballs and parasols,
ink caps and champignons,
frilly-gilled and plump of flesh,

a festival of fungi sprouting earthy fresh.

Kim M. Russell, 9th February 2021

gray mushrooms at daytime

My response to dVerse Poets Pub Poetics: Let’s have fun, guys!

Sarah is back for Poetics with a book called Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake, which she recommends as a fascinating look at the world of fungi.

She says that fungi are our secret companions, facilitating growth and communication between trees in forests, producing chemicals used as drugs (medical and hallucinogenic), able to find the shortest route through mazes, as well as making a risotto even more delicious. They also have their place in our culture – think of hobbits, pixies, fairies, Mario and Alice in Wonderland.

Sarah has shared poems by Simon Armitage, Sylvia Plath and Charles Wright to inspire us to write poems and have fun with fungi.

Image by Amy Humphries on Unsplash

46 thoughts on “Dewy Mushrooms”

  2. I love the spore confetti, and those colours – so joyful! It’s nice to fungi being fun – they are often given a sinister edge. I like those names, as well. You could do a great found poem just with fungal names.

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    1. Thank you, Sarah. Many years ago, before teaching, I was PA to the founder of New Scientist. He was a fungus fanatic, He knew everything about them, and he kept promising to take me mushroom foraging. Sadly it never happened and he has since passed away. I may never get that chance again.

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  4. I’m partial to the button mushrooms. Love then sauteed in butter and worcestershire over steak! YUM Your poem, by the way, was equally palatable!

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  7. You really put the fun in fungi here, Kim! I felt like I was really here at such festival, especially in these lines:

    “Puffballs and parasols,
    ink caps and champignons,
    frilly-gilled and plump of flesh,

    a festival of fungi sprouting earthy fresh.”

    Something so surreal and fun in these lines, maybe it’s the rhythm too, but it flows so well and it’s very festive! Beautiful work.

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  9. So whimsical and beauteous, with wonderful word-smithing (already noted). This one made me smile. My grandfather was a woodsman, and he knew his mushrooms. Many a time we cooked fresh trout, laced with bacon greased mushrooms.

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  10. Wonderful Kim, and I really liked the rhyme of your two closing lines. I am sharing this interesting fact today: A “Armillaria Ostoyae” mushroom, in the Malheur National Forest, in the Strawberry Mountains of eastern Oregon, was found to be the largest fungal colony in the world, spanning an area of 3.5 square miles (2,200 acres; 9.1 km2).

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  13. This took me back to a childhood where my sisters and I enjoyed kicking puffballs to see the spores disperse. We also liked to collect mushrooms for cooking and knew which ones were ok to take. Sometimes we would stumble upon ‘fairy rings’ on our ramblings. This all took place on our childhood farm of 500 acres so there was plenty of room to forage.

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