This is the season for mushrooms. They pop up abundantly after every rain. On my walks I meet mushroom gatherers who, hopefully, know the edible from the poisonous…no one wants to share the secret hiding places of the best to eat. Every year I resolve to take a class on mushroom identification and then forget to sign up for one…and every year I try to take photos of those I find on walks around home. I don’t own a macro lens so most of these shots are taken with my Canon G9 on macro setting. I find beauty in these earthy things…and I’m pretty sure Sylvia Plath did too…
Sylvia Plath – Mushrooms
Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.
Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.
Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,
Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,
Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We
Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking
Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!
We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,
Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:
We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
