Poem of the Week: “A Sign” by John McAuliffe

“A Sign” by Jonn McAuliffe fits well in the poetic tradition of mushrooms—Emily Dickinson and Slyvia Plath also wrote poems about them, and so have Paul Muldoon and David Wheatley. Somewhat surprisingly, however, “A Sign” begins with an un-poetic assertion, “Nothing fanciful in their welling up from the black earth.” Almost in spite of itself, the poem quickly blooms with various descriptions of “the mushrooms’ little accented cliffs,” “pencil shavings,” and the fungi are personified as “Awkward customers on the earth’s cold shoulder.” The poem becomes, in its own words, an “argument” that “brightens what springs up overnight.”

A Sign

for Jeffrey Wainwright

Nothing’s fanciful in their welling up from the black earth,
the mushrooms’ little accented cliffs,
pencil shavings the green moss borders and leans on.

Awkward customers on the earth’s cold shoulder,
their frills and petaled cairn fester
by the body of water a boardwalk carries us across.

The moving peat was a test to walk, unlike the boardwalk’s line,
which I hang on to, wishing it were permanent
as the sprawling fire of winter daylight. Its argument

brightens what springs up overnight,
the birch branch suddenly alive in the aspiring woods.
How we labor under its high sign.

—John McAuliffe, from National Theatre (2026)