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.