Botany

Sarah Holland-Batt

After the rain, we went out in pairs

to hunt the caps that budded at night:

wet handfuls of waxtips and widows,

lawyer's wigs, a double-ringed yellow.

We shook them out onto gridded sheets,

the girls more careful than the boys,

pencilled notes on their size and shape,

then levelled a wood-press over their heads.

Overnight, they dropped scatter patterns

in dot-and-dash, spindles and asterisks

that stained the page with smoky rings,

blush and blot, coal-dust blooms.

In that slow black snow of spores

I saw a woodcut winter cart and horse

careen off course, the dull crash

of iron and ash, wheels unravelling.

All day, a smell of loam hung overhead.

We bent like clairvoyants at our desks

trying to divine the message left

in all those little deaths, the dark, childless stars.