What is this alien brain/no brain
that weaves its weft and warp, pervades
the world? A web of teasing fingers
that, tangled, threads through soil and roots.
It rules without our recognition
hidden beneath/within/without
blurring boundaries, one yet other.
Silently it speaks and calls
in foreign words, articulates
beyond our comprehension; this
mycelial ‘deity’ in whom
‘we live and breathe and have our being’.

I’m finally reading Merlin Sheldrake’s ‘Entangled Life’, an exploration of the world of fungi that I referred to in ‘Poem 77 – WWW‘. What a glorious enigma they are, I had no idea of the extent to which life is pervaded by and dependent on them.
(12.03.24)

© Ben Quant 2024
Photo by Christopher Cassidy on Unsplash