Deep in the cool earth
Fungal hyphae nudge the soil
Rain rises rings of fruit
We forage in the forest
Fill baskets as spores fill the air
So many mushrooms
They look good to eat
Deceptive little fuckers
She picked the death cap
They find her cold body
Some mycellium love flesh
Spread through blood and bone
In the new Autumn
They find her with the amanitas
A mushroom nursery.
This post is for @beelightfully whose haiku challenge comes out on Monday. Thanks Bee for going with the mushroom 🍄 theme - I had a stupid amount of fun with this one. Its Autumn here and there are mushrooms everywhere. I hope I don't accidentally eat the death cap ☠️☠️☠️
Tagging @owasco @blurtpoems and any other Blurtians to join in!
But you can't beat Sylvia Plaths poem in mushrooms. I love the simplicity of 'so many of us, so many of us' as if it is an army taking over the world. Which they might, when we are dead and gone. They were here before us at the beginning of time, and will eat our flesh when we die.
Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly
Very quietly
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
Our foot's in the door
Woohoo I love the graphics of those photos wow✊
haha, I've been out in the forest a lot. Did you read the haiku?
Of course I read the haiku and it was amazing. I'm sure I'm going to join soon.
I thought of you when I read that prompt, and you have not disappointed! The addition of Plath's poem (wow! never read that one before) augments your own. Love the images of the circles of life in both of them. And this post puts me in mind of mine for "ghost." Impermanence is illustrated here.
I watched a super unsettling ghostly movie the other day on Netflix called 'The Pretty Thing in Your House is Me'. The reviews were divided and it wasn't your traditional horror. It was a slow and strange burn and very ghostly - I really enjoyed it.
I'm glad you enjoyed it - I didn't take long to write it, and I'm sure I could craft a better job (I'm sure I will, and publish 'over there' next week) but it was fun to write. Obviously I've been talking to the mushooms alot lately and everyone that knows me probably wishes mushroom season was over haha!
Don't you love Plath's poem? It's delightful and unearthly at the same time.
A quick edit - I should wait until I've crafted perfection, the way you do, but I'm too quick to publish!
Deep in the dark earth
Fungal hyphae nudge the soil
Rain rises rings of fruit
She steals plump porcini
Slippery jacks and milk caps
Spores drift like bridal veils
The basket is full
Unawares, she picks a death cap
Deceptive fucker
She falls darkly, cold
Mycellium fed by dead flesh
Spread through blood and bone
In the next Autumn
They find her with the amanitas
A mushroom nursery.
I love it! Wraps up by bringing in eternity. It's a great poem, a ballad, lyrics maybe.
There is something about this line. It's very rich with birth, coupling, earth power, and mystery for starters. Perfect for haiku, but only six syllables, which is fine by me.
I ALWAYS find something to change within the first minute of hitting "publish." And then more after that. When I wrote haiku for banafish community, I tried to use @marcoriccardi's suggestion that I ponder the haiku/prompt for a long time, then it should just pop out, like a freewrite. Sometimes this worked, but more often than not I would have pages and pages of snippets. Eventually I could easily cull that all down to fewer than 17 syllables.
Easy - change from: 'spores drift like bridal veils' to 'spores drifting like bridal veils'?
Pondering makes better poetry. I think I've been pondering mushrooms so much lately that I didn't need to ponder the haiku much, but it did work better on the next draft - I was pretty pleased with the bridal veils too!
I like drift, it's more timeless, and the whole thing is lovely. Not haiku, but does that matter? For the challenge I suppose it does (there's another line that has the "wrong" number of syllables), but the whole piece works as a non-haiku poem.
Dammit.. lol. Yeah the more I play with it the less I care of the formality of it haiku wise... Thanks for playing with me on this one babe!
Congratulations, your post has been curated by @r2cornell-curate. Also, find us on Discord
Felicitaciones, su publication ha sido votado por @r2cornell-curate. También, encuéntranos en Discord
Amazing!! Love them!!
Appreciate your effort
Sending gratitude 🙏 ❤️
🍄
You are welcome - love supporting a great idea! I really had fun with this one, especially as it took a dark turn! Thanks for using 'mushrooms' as the theme - looking forward to others haiku!
Wow you nailed this, awesome post! Love these haikus and the beautiful images that go with them 😍