Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets' daily poetry dispatch. Read "The Mushroom Pickers" by Lawrence Blake, part of the League's Fresh Voices program.

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The Mushroom Pickers

By Lawrence Blake

 

The first three fingers grasp the stalk

and twist a quarter turn against the sun

to pluck the fungus from well-seasoned sod

rubbed by boots and running with rain.

 

Through the window of an old car I see them

bobbing up and down along the brush, dozens

stooping and lurching at the border of my path.

Singing in tongues, leaning in prayer to the earth.

 

Their baskets heavy, stuffed with flat-caps and stalks,

along with wet dirt that clings to fleshy stumps.

 

I drive on past the mushroom pickers, up to a border

where soldiers stack bags of soil and string wire.

Stooping, bobbing, as their spades cut the turf;

these almost-children scanning dulled eyes to the north.

 

There’s no music here, just a distant snapping

of artillery coughing. A barking of some promise

that the percussion here will join with singing.

 

And days go by. I return south from that post

to witness the same convocation of bowed,

lurching, heads picking mushrooms at dawn.

 

Whispering to their forest in song. Three fingers

clenched to twist fungus out the sod. Communing

with the mud that their brothers and sisters quietly

slit into trenches just up the Chernihiv-bound road.

 

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Copyright © Lawrence Blake

Lawrence Blake is a writer from Canada. A member of the Canadian Armed Forces, he has seen service throughout Canada, Ukraine, Iraq, and long term care facilities during the COVID pandemic. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in a variety of spaces.

Fresh Voices is a publication and workshop program created by and for the League's associate members, curated and edited by Erin Vance.

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