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Fungi - Poem

Fungi transformed in our imaginations after the Wood wide web was discovered and described by the forest ecologist Suzanne Simard. And later powerfully evoked by writers like Peter Wohlleben and Robert Macfarlane. We now know that they connect forests, live in the ocean's depths and thrive in nuclear waste where nothing else can live. Their structures and lives confound our understanding. Their presence on the planet is almost all pervasive, that the dominion of any other life on here turns illusory as we study fungi more deeply. This poem is written from astonishment, terror, enchantment and a range of other feelings fungi can conjure.

Fungi


Let me throw you a riddle.
Us, I, all of me.
Bedrock, sky, all in between.
Big, bigger than any dinosaur.
Deep, deep as ocean floor.

Life and life's reverse,
death and death's converse,
comprehension's curse,
webwork, network,
sub-soil universe.
Underland's ancient internet,
Underground's riddle-verse.

Mildew, mushroom and mold -
mere dots above spaces we hold.
We are alchemists of matter,
for miles in ev'ry meter.
Post-men of roots, grammar of trees,
linkers of forests, vanquishers of species.

Brackets, leaf-spots, patterners of things,
food, poison and fairy rings.
Revivers of land - burnt and razed,
dwellers of death-soil - nuclear waste.

We are creators and confounders,
recyclers and destroyers.

Would you dare try
to fathom fungi?
Unravel our extent,
Untangle our webs,
Understand our depths,
Unriddle our ways?
You'd rather perish
moulder, rot, decay,
spread our spores,
feed our hyphae,
and have all your matter -
dis-mattered - and dispensed away.

-M.Yuvan



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