Gathering Mushrooms in the Shadow of a Barn

One had a ball of water that magnified the word shiver
on its cap, and one had been torn and thrown
against the wood, a soft bomb, leaving gills and skin.
I knew enough to give them names and say the words
primordium and veil in the manner of my neighbour
who can find mushrooms blindfolded. The smell,
she says, when you’re downwind, is earth as invitation,
earth made vertical with lit stems. My fingers flecked
with spores, the knees of my jeans dark from over-
night rain, I arranged them cap-to-stipe in lines.
In the barn, at a table, my knife gleamed in a band
of afternoon sun. Agaricus campestris, I said,
and a crow leaned from a rafter to listen.

Anthony Lawrence has published nineteen collections of poetry and a novel. His books and individual poems have won a number of awards, including the Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry, the Ginkgo Prize for Eco poetry, the Gregory O’Donohue Poetry prize and the Peter Porter Poetry Prize. He lives on Moreton Bay, Queensland.