MUSHROOM

a poem by Emily Dickinson   The mushroom is the elf of plants, At evening it is not; At morning in a truffled hut It stops upon a spot   As if it tarried always; And yet its whole career Is shorter than a snake's delay, And fleeter than a tare.   'Tis vegetation's juggler, The germ of alibi; Doth like a bubble antedate, And like a bubble hie.   I feel as if the grass were pleased To have it intermit; The surreptitious scion Of summer's circumspect.   Had nature any outcast face, Could she a son condemn, Had nature an Iscariot, That mushroom,--it is him.