Questionable Stropharia

I am approaching the end of a twenty six-week long docent training at a wildlife preserve. Last week we did fungi and lichen – right up my alley of weirdness. Not everyone shares my enthusiasm.

One thing about mushrooms  - they have the best names. Common names of birds, plants, fungi, insects, etc. generally make great raw materials for poetry if you tend towards the playful. (Some poets are so serious.)  These words make for good list poems. Mushroom names seem to lend themselves to children’s poetry, where the most immanent dangers are concealed by an illusion of innocence created by rhyming verse.

Jump rope rhymes are great because the rope keeps the beat and forces the person (people) speaking to slow down or speed up certain words in order to keep time. I like the way meaning becomes subordinate to sound while the jumper is in; it’s a great metaphor for childhood.

The Blue-Skinned Man – a Jump Rope Rhyme

‘Ban, ‘Ban, Ca-Caliban!
The blue-skinned man
is a Fungus Fan;
the holy see
of mycology,
He’s the Mushroom Man
from a far-away land

When I went a strolling
Below the forest rainbow,
The blue-skinned man told me:
“Careful where your feet go–

‘Ban, ‘Ban, Ca-Caliban!
The blue-skinned man
is a Fungus Fan;
the holy see
of mycology,
He’s the Mushroom Man
from a far-away land

“I’m a fungus in the dead logs,
A mushroom in the roots;
I’m a truffle in the ground
So be wary of your boots!”

Skip a rope, jump a rope,
get in line–
How many mushrooms can you find?

Ravenel’s Stinkhorn
Deadly Galerina
Turkey Tail, Inky Cap
Bleeding Mycena
Dead Man’s Fingers
Strangulated Amanita

Dryad’s Saddle
Dung-loving Psilocybe
Beefsteak Polypore
Poison Pie
Witch’s Butter
Club-footed Clitocybe

Orange Milky, Panther
Shaggy Parasol
Witch’s Hat, Death Cap
False Chanterelle

Destroying Angel
The King and Slippery Jack
Swamp Beacon, Dry Rot
Fading Scarlet Waxy Cap

Fawn and Pleated Puffballs
Ochre Spreading Tooth
Old Man of the Woods
Pig’s Ear and Velvet Foot

Devil’s Urn and Sulphur Shelf
Sweating, Sweetbreads
If the blue-skinned man
catches you, you’re DEAD!   (jumper goes out)

‘Ban, ‘Ban, Ca-Caliban!
The blue-skinned man
is a Fungus Fan;
the holy see
of mycology,
He’s the Mushroom Man
from a far-away land

Read Full Post »

Our Lady of Palabras Perdidas

Marjory the Trash Heap: "I'm orange peels, I'm coffee grounds, I'm wisdom!"

We live in a world of disposable objects. In the last few years, widely circulated images of the garbage pickers on the mountains of debris in countries like India and Brazil harken the arrival of what some scientists are now calling the “Anthropocene,” or the Age of Man.  According to a 2011 article in National Geographic, the “stratigrapher’s ” job “is to piece together Earth’s history from clues that can be coaxed out of layers of rock millions of years after the fact.” This article got me thinking…what would one call someone who specializes in interpreting layers of discarded words?

I am constantly scavenging the internet for lists of old words. One of my very favorite books is The Sailor’s Word-Book by William Henry Smyth. The SWB is available as a free a pdf download through Project Gutenberg, and promises hours of geeky entertainment. I can’t recommend it enough.

In “Our Lady of Palabras Perdidas” I imagine a kind of linguistic bag lady, rummaging among the heaps for hidden treasures like a medicine woman looking for healing herbs. She encounters a frail and aging Mnemosyne –the embodiment of memory in Greek mythology and the mother of the nine muses– like one might encounter an artifact on which history is both inscribed and interpreted (i.e., Marjory the Trash Heap).

I don’t remember where I found this list, but it’s a fun one.

Mnemosyne

Our Lady of Palabras Perdidas

Old yes! But a bobbish yet, I is.
“Vagabunda!” They shout, hands over ears.
“Conservadora!” I says to me kindred scavengers,
Who have taken to calling me, in these times:

Our Lady of Palabras Perdidas.

Their language be but sad, cag-mag
Rummagin’ in Latin shards n’ splinters.
“Nossa Senhora, where came you from?”
“Ahhhh,” and here I point North and East,
With a stick of smooth olive wood.

“When the hills were still young and stupid,
I was married over the broomstick to a quaddy lad.
Many, many years back, he died;
I’ve since grown a good-sized hump upon me back –
A hillock cloaked in gray!” I says.

“I’ve no whingle, and I’m no drumble!” Meh.
I make my way scavenging in the rubbish heaps
For las palabras perdidas – unwanted and fluey

Made Time’s poor orphan,
him but a proud Costermonger!
“But when ye rub ‘em up, make ‘em shine!”
Even such a one as meself, of deep wrine can see
Under the oily tarnish and the stain
Ye know what they says (flourish of me hands)

‘Verba Volant, scripta manent – words fly but writings remain!’
Yadda, yadda, yadda.

In one heap Me found a birdish Burdalane
The last one, poor wee lass, surviving of her kin
Cark, she were, and thought a cumberground
“But now, now dear!” I said. “Our Lady
Will make ye a shake-down of fine feathers
And new spring grass, with whittles of white petals
And draughts from the clear, running brook
Before yer queachy young bones sleepaway.”

Her laughter flowed like music, a sweet rindle
And she kept a small pebble in her mouth
Lest felth become strength – its ugesome successor.

It were by chance me found Mnemosyne

– Beloved Eldmother

And muse of old and wordly women
I pulled her up from her Earth-fast taproots
But she, forswunak and grown lanken
Began to speak but clyted.

Her voice was wantsome from moss and rust
She’d become elden, and dwined
Under a wasted of letters and her long sloom
“These young and fluttersome moffles –
What do they know of a word’s wroth?”

We drank tea and eftsoons she spake again:
“Ne’er a word ran deeper than sewers of ruined cities
Nor does history disturb a taproot or a deep-sea clam.
All language will ever be in the heaps.”

Read Full Post »

Radiant City

When the woman fell through
the crack in the city sidewalk
she fell many fathoms
towards a radiant abyss

There were so many women
down in the crystal caves
they had been falling through
the cracks for so long

The women made a city near
the vents where the blue light
of bioluminescent animals
lit up the long nights

They walked quietly in the sparkling
salt pillar forests, gathering
in the flowing flora, collecting
honey from the honeyfish’s mouth

After they had been there a while
a few wished to swim in the subterranean
sea; and so they grew gills and tales
with prismic, adamantine scales

Soon women fell like rain through
the cracks in the city sidewalks
which are said to cover over
nearly two percent of the Earth

But nobody missed them.
Whenever a man went missing
through the cracks, the other
men would search the manholes

They did not see the radiant city
nor do they hear the mermaids
singing softly to the fallen, turning them
gently into pillars of salt
with their lullabies

Read Full Post »

Still Life With Objects

Like that infamous ship
on the flat horizon, the one the
Florida Indians couldn’t
see although it was right in front
of them I wonder how long
I have lived among these people
who were, until now, this moment,
broken headphones, steel wool
dryer lint, a throbbing headache

Lampooning behind mirrored masks
of debris in a car wash puddle–
Jiffy Lube coupons, a jay’s wing
a Big Gulp straw
a twist tie, an oil sheen

We know them – discarded bottles,
pills and perfumed soaps
that pass unaltered from us
into the coursing waterways
making amphibians female
as they go, killing freshwater mussels
- those keepers of the rivers’
clear waters all these eons and we
didn’t know until now
how things forever alter

I cannot re-enchant the world
myself, inert and alone
in my house
the dishwasher hums
the toilet sings
the radiator knocks; outside
the chainsaw, the leafblower,
the shop vac, the lawnmowers
drown out sounds
the laughter of children swinging

A small honey mushroom is growing
between my toes it is
beginning to discompose my
feet on the spot where I stand
suddenly awake
listening to all these people here

soon the microbes of the forest floor
will migrate through the rotten
webbing, through my limbs
on which the crows alight

I, like a tree
while things in my house,
the gathering, flammable armies beneath
garbage mountains, flotillas of objects
the size of Texas, the greenhouse breath
assemble, are on the move
singing, humming, knocking, flowing
while I listen to the rasping of
a diasporic wind
in my leaves

Read Full Post »