Beneath the trees that reach for skies with limbs both scorched and wide,
Where drongos wheel through whistling winds and grasses shift with pride,
Below the ridged and ancient stones, where roots and silence meet,
There lies a thread of wonder spun beneath our very feet.
It twines through soil and memory, through layers dark and deep,
A hidden net of life and death, of giving and of keep.
It passes under leaf and bark, beneath each scattered seed,
A silent conversation told in gesture, pulse, and deed.
The walker on the dusty trail may never even know
That every step is met beneath by threads that hum and grow.
The children in the meadow’s lap, the elders at their rest,
Are cradled by a living web, unseen but manifest.
Mycelium, the silent root of all that thrives and falls,
A vast and pulsing underworld below the trees’ grand halls.
It links the green, the dead, the young, in networks soft and wide,
No single tree stands tall alone, for kinship moves inside.
It carries word of blight and bloom, of rot and rain and heat,
It sings in tongues of chemical, of touch, of time discreet.
When fires roar and blacken skies and ash replaces air,
It holds the map of life to come, already planted there.
Though flames may char the canopy and turn the leaves to ghosts,
The web lies patient underground, and sends its quiet hosts.
From spores that slept through centuries, from threads that did not die,
New green will rise from funeral soil, and stretch back to the sky.
This is the lore beneath our boots, lines hidden deep in stone,
A mesh of ancient governance, of cartilage, wood, and bone.
The fallen limb, the hollow stump, are not the final verse,
They feed a deeper dialogue that runs in full reverse.
The sapling bends to touch the net, receives what it is owed,
The old trees gift their wisdom down a fungal-minded road.
And in that dark republic, no crown nor throne is found,
But balance flows in quiet loops beneath the fertile ground.
More intricate than any code we press into a screen,
More ordered than the satellites that blink beyond the seen,
Our circuits crackle overhead, but clumsy, brash, and loud,
Compared to what the soil weaves in silence, soft and proud.
The tender bloom too frail to last alone upon the breeze
Survives because the hidden strands connect it to the trees.
The rotting log becomes a nurse, and in its loam and skin,
The spores ensure that life returns where death once lay within.
The cycle turns without our hand, without our grand design,
Decay becomes the bread of life, and fungus is the spine.
The leaf that falls, the fruit that drops, the carcass on the floor,
All feed a web of whispered care that pulses evermore.
Though metal cuts and concrete grows, though walls may steal the light,
The network lies in wait below, with patient, old insight.
Though we forget the thread we break with every mindless tread,
The fungal web remembers all, and nurtures what has bled.
And we, the ones who stand upright, who pave and plan and build,
Might learn a lesson from below, if only we were stilled.
To share as trees are taught to share, to lift when others fall,
To speak in quiet empathy that resonates through all.
Perhaps the way to heal is not in reaching for the skies,
But bending down to meet the thread that humbly underlies.
Not in the stars, but in the loam, the damp, the peat, the rot,
A kingdom ruled by giving back, and keeping what we’ve got.
Hence pause before you clear the land, or claim what’s not your own,
A billion threads beneath you weave a truth you’ve never known.
And every stem that touches sun, and every bud you see,
Exists because the ground below said, “You can lean on me.”
The young must not forget this net, nor old ones lose its worth,
All breathing souls must know the gift, that rises from the earth.
For we are not above this web, nor separate, nor grand,
We are the trembling filaments that make the living land.
Thenceforth walk with care, and speak with grace, and know you’re never far
From ancient tongues that murmur still from subterranean seed and scar.
The fungi knit the world below, with quiet, tireless hymn,
And life is held together by the web of mycelium.
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This poem reminds me of the long running down grading of the Australian university system, principally under Little Johnnie Howard, arguably the second worst Prim Monster in Australian history.
The Dawkins Reforms of the 1980s sought to reduce the number of Australian universities to a number more relevant to the national population, while placing the eight (8) so-called brownstone universities high on a pedestal above the forced amalgamations & financial cuts.
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These Reforms were flawed by the deliberate omission of a cap on the salary packages for Chancellors and Vice Chancellors (VCs) which was to encourage excellent corporate managers to move into university management positions.
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It has certainly done that with the unintended consequence of increasing the proportion of funding now expended on bureaucrats rather than research or teaching. Indeed, Melbourne University is reported as paying the VC $1.6 MILLION against the mere $600,000 paid to the Prime Minister. Now ”the Celebrity Set” have joined the rush for easy money and prestige that accompanies being Chancellor, a nominal executive role in most tertiary institutions.
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Regional universities are little better with the BIG MONEY paid at the top of the organisation for mixed talents. At UNE Armidale NSW it is reported that the desk jockeys, known locally as ”Boolacrats” after ”Boolaminbah” the original property mansion first occupied in 1937, account for about 50% of the total UNE Annual Budget.
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A change in corporate culture is required urgently, that this poem embodies. Forest trees rely upon Mycorrhiza, part of the fungal ”micro-flora” of the forest floor. These fungi down in the dirt provide much of the nutrition for the trees, that usually flower in the top twigs of the forest crown.
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Now there have been too many VCs who operate as flowers, waving themselves around as the corporate genius running the show, when in fact what is required is the old fashioned down in the dirt VC who builds his personal reputation by building the successes of that university.