Fungi by Nicole Davies (excerpted from Outside Your Window: A First Book of Nature.
Pale balls and spotted saucers up on stalks,
rubbery Frisbees on trunks of trees,
gray furry fuzz on fallen leaves,
skinny oragne finger poking through the grass,
They’re not animals, and they’re not plants,
They’re something else–
they’re fungi: toadstools, mushrooms, molds.
They’ve been here all along,
their string-like bodies
hidden in the soil, under bark, inside branches.
The wet weather’s brought them out in these weird shapes,
and when they’ve spread their seeds, as fine as dust,
they’ll disappear as quietly as they came.
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