Showing posts with label mushrooms. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mushrooms. Show all posts

14 April 2025

NaPoWriMo 2025 (part IV)

Days 12-14 of NaPoWriMo

Grief

The grave is a lonely place,
But only for the mourner

Flesh and bones are temporary,
Hold on to the memories,
A thought cannot die

And if you spy, in the far corner
Of the graveyard, an unmarked plot
Beneath an elder tree,
Know that the bones interred there
Are a wish

And the spirit of the Black Dog
Has ushered your loved one
To their eternity


Foraging Fungi

In congregated groups beneath the blackberries
And clustered heaps on silver birch and hazel trees
Enticing shades of ochre, russet, and crimson
Or muted browns and greens that hide them 'neath oak trees
Their fluted forms, bulbous sacs, and elegant gills
Microscopic spores that drop from their aging gills


Forced

In the warm, damp dark
A root becomes a shoot becomes a stem.
The creak and groan of cellulose,
Reaching for a non-existent light.
The slight flutter of juvenile leaves
And the faint pitter-patter as soil is upheaved.
Clean pink flesh, and the stress of growth
Is sugary sweet,
A snail's foot has ten thousand teeth,
Ten thousand tiny chomps to feast
And the rhubarb keeps
On growing.


NaPoWriMo 2025 (part III)

Days 8-11 of NaPoWriMo

Everyone

This world is made for you, and me, and everyone
The great, the small, the rich, the poor, and everyone

A cityscape of steel, and trees, and concrete
The comfort of a living space for everyone

Fields of wheat, and strawberries, and apple groves
A healthy, and a filling meal for everyone

Time ton cry, and time to laugh and celebrate
For joy, and love, and grief is felt by everyone

A world divided is no use to anyone
A world united is the peace of everyone


Ducks

A path runs beside the hedgerows
Down towards the river flow
And towering hawthorns grow
Delicate flowers among their thorns.
The stone steps are worn
And yet your feet are sure,
Settled in the grooves of time,
Beneath ivy vines, and a foliage roof.
A pair of ducks, aloof, glide past
And the brief flash of minnows
Shine silver in the water below.


Mushrooms

A mottled mesh of mycelium
The metabolic metronome amongst
Aging roots and amber roaches
Rousted from the rotting homes.
Heather, hyssop, hyacinth,
And singing starlings, swooping
In the sun beams. Reams of leaf litter
Lain on lice and mice and ivy shoots.
Shaded scenes of simply summers,
Thrumming with the thirst for freedom.
Thistledown and hummingbirds,
And hope sits heavy in my heart.
But here amid the ancient agaric
Grasses glint with morning dew
And mushroom gills are golden gilt
With mottled marks of mycelium.



My own Changes

They say it takes time,
It's not a matter of pride
She had in her mind how your future unfurled.
You cut off your hair,
And changed what you wear,
She's not sure if you're a boy or a girl.

But pink birthday cards
And gendered words,
I struggle to see where the effort is made.
And over the years
It's becoming clear
That this is the way she always behaved.

I've bitten my tongue
And suffered her wrongs
But family only takes you so far.
She might never know
If I'm a boy or a girl
But I am who I am when you're ready to care.