GROUNDS
By Bonny Cassidy
Published 13 October 2021
Malcolm Howie, painter of fungi
bound his watercolours and died, aged 36.
From age 16 he was unable to walk, and towards the end of his life
only able to paint with movements of his wrist.
I consider making a crude analogy out of his demise.
Mushrooms spring up with autumn rain, expand, shed
their spores, and decay; all in a matter of weeks.
It crumbles: fungi do not atrophy, they do not fail.
When a fungal flower perishes
it has done its work until
remade.
Click here to read the full poem with the author's original formatting »
Permission to use their words kindly granted by
Natalie Harkin and Loraine Padgham.
Created by Red Room Poetry, New Shoots celebrates and cultivates poems inspired by plants and place to deepen cultural connections with nature. Bonny Cassidy was one of 10 Victorian poets commissioned to create a poem inspired by sites, spores, histories and seeds across the Royal Botanic Gardens of Victoria. These poems were performed, printed on seed packs and 'planted' in the gardens.
'Grounds' was also showcased as part of a Red Room public poetry initiative in which plant-themed poems were published on Melbourne's Yarra Trams. You can read more about this here.