Our poet Simon Haines makes a macabre find on the Woodland Trust website. Dead Man’s Fingers reach for the sky on this Day 681 of the daily poems. Here is his found poem, complete with scary photo!
Dead Man’s Fingers
Xylaria polymorpha
Swollen blackened fingers
reaching for the sky
spooky as if someone
buried beneath the woodland
is trying to make
a last-ditch escape.
Macabre clusters of
swollen warty fingers
pale grey when young
with a whitish tip.
This pale grey is a coating
of asexual spores
inside the flesh is white and tough
under the black spore-bearing layer.
Simon Haines
https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/trees-woods-and-wildlife/fungi-and-lichens/dead-mans-fingers