Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly
Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.
Above, are the opening lines of Sylvia Plath’s Mushrooms.
The poem was published in 1960 in Plath’s first collection, Colossus and Other Poems.
This post’s mushrooms had not long emerged, when my beloved and I encountered them, just a few metres away from the “African Flower” which featured in #34 of Pelican Yoga’s “a shining moment” series.
I have loved Plath’s Mushrooms ever since it ambushed me in high school, more than half a century ago.
That said, humans would do well to understand that fungi are absolutely crucial to the viability of most (maybe, ultimately, to all) life on “our” planet.
Click here for a succinct explanation of fungi’s importance, or click this, for a lengthier, illustrated one.
“The facts”, however, do not render any less potent the conclusion to Plath’s Mushrooms:
Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:
We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot’s in the door.
Read the full poem here
—
Five of the twelve cuts on Australian songster Paul Kelly’s 2018 album Nature were his musical settings of 19th or 20th century poems from British and American sources.
Kelly’s love of poetry is longstanding, and his embrace is wide.
Late last year Penguin published Love is Strong as Death, a substantial anthology of poems chosen by Paul Kelly.
It is prefaced by his own intelligent, passionate, lucid, welcoming, unpretentious Introduction.
(oh that everyone who is wary of poetry, intimidated by or it, or indifferent to it, were to read that, or, even, better, to hear Paul say it out loud!)
Those who already enjoy poetry will already know quite a few of the poems in Kelly’s anthology, but they will almost certainly still thereby discover quite a few rewarding, “new” poems.
For those who don’t already enjoy poetry, Paul’s anthology – and his Introduction to it – could well “open the door”.
I warmly recommend this poetry-centric conversation between Sarah Kanowski and Paul Kelly, and I particularly urge you to hear its “live, solo” performance of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ Pied Beauty.
If you wish to go straight to that, Pied Beauty is 47 minutes into the podcast.