MUSHROOMS
In long grass by the road,
we found mushrooms,
their round whiteness nestled like eggs,
their gills delicate as wings.
Later we found them pushing through difficult soil with grey-dirty heads,
undersides a rich brown;
they seemed to love the pine-tree roots,
emerging like odd-shaped rocks.
You swooped on these
like a bird discovering a strayed egg,
your elation at finding and collecting,
a child's form of flight.
The rash of pine-tree mushrooms
heralded fungi in the garden:
strange, brown leathery-capes,
rubbery grey ones,
and then a spill of tiny golden ones,
their caps gleaming in the pale sun.
They seemed to grow overnight,
appearing on a day of rainbows arched across the water,
and I remembered another day:
the sea was a constant unmarked
but the sky wobbled bulging
blue and dark like a throbbing pulse
rainbows sprang from my friend's mouth
orange and purple burst from beneath pebbles
that grew into rocks then boulders
subsuming the whole of the beach
until my mind was pushing against stone walls
how fragile my friend became
buffeted as a tired moth
transparent as wings
folded fading
and an earlier time
when the wallpaper's swirls
made me giddy and distraught
the sound of an aeroplane over the water of the casino
flooding my head with tears of loneliness
and I cried your father's name
into the enormous sky
As I straighten from this stretch
of gaudy light in the garden,
I am glad you are caught only by the buttony-
whiteness and lovely firmness of field mushrooms.
I hope that at eighteen you are strong
with the delight of dirt between your fingers;
that it is enough to hold
the comforting weight of a mushroom
in your hands.
Originally published in Meanjin, v.61 n.2, 2002.
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