For this Earth Day, also a Saturday, I was to select an Emily Dickinson poem and change it by removing dashes and line breaks. I was then to add my own breaks as well as to add, remove, or change words. Basically, I was to make a Dickinson poem mine.

As I read various versions of her many poems, I learned that others over the years have taken license to make changes to the point that I cannot determine original forms or words. In the case of one book I have, an entire stanza of a poem was either added by one or deleted by the other.

Because today is Earth Day, I chose a Dickinson poem that relates to nature: “The Mushroom is the Elf of Plants” – (1350); or XXV, page 97, in my copy of The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson (intro and notes by Rachel Wetzsteon). Generally, Dickinson did not title her poems, thus the numbers.

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Bill’s Magic Trifle

The Liberty Mushroom is
the elf of plants at evening,
but not at morning, in its truffled magic hut
it stopped upon a spot as if it always hesitated.
Yet, its whole life is shorter
than a snake’s delay
and faster than the strike.

It’s its vegetation’s juggler,
the ever-changing nature is like a bubble
on the ground or floating to the trees.

I feel as if the grass was pleased as I
to have it grow in and among her blades of
scion of Summer’s circumspect.

If Nature had a more supple face
or she could pick a favorite fairy;
if Nature had an apostate fungus
the lowly liberty cap mushroom would be him!
And a favorite ‘shroom among us.

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Look both ways because then is not now.
Mind the gaps left by migration and imagination.
Happy Earth Day.