CMP Review 2024-09-27

September 27, 2024

The Mushroom is the Elf of Plants

by Emily Dickinson

The Mushroom is the elf of plants,

At evening, it is not;
At morning in a truffled hut
It stops upon a spot

As if it tarried always;

And yet its whole career
Is shorter than a snake’s delay,
And fleeter than a tare.

’T is vegetation’s juggler,

The germ of alibi;
Doth like a bubble antedate,
And like a bubble hie.

I feel as if the grass were pleased

To have it intermit;
The surreptitious scion
Of summer’s circumspect.

Had nature any outcast face,

Could she a son contemn,
Had nature an Iscariot,
That mushroom,—it is him!

@antonella.f.greco