Mysterious Mushrooms

About this poem

While growing up in the Caribbean island nation of British Colonial Jamaica in the 1940s, I first learned of mushrooms by the local name of “Duppy Umbrella,” a Jamaican Patois or Jamaican Creole term derived from the word “Duppy,” of Northwest African origin, and meaning ghost or spirit. In fact, much of Jamaican and other Caribbean folklore revolves around duppies, generally regarded as malevolent spirits. Hence, to refer locally to mushrooms generically as “Duppy Umbrellas,” is to suggest that mushrooms, categorically, are malevolent supernatural energies that pervade human spaces. However, there has been movement afoot in Jamaica to reframe Jamaican mushrooms that have been demonstrated scientifically as having psychedelic properties as medicine. As of July 2021, the Jamaican Government put in place interim protocols to facilitate the growth and cultivation of psilocybin mushrooms, the species of mushrooms or “Duppy Umbrellas “ also known locally in Jamaica as “magic mushrooms” and recognized by the Faculty of Medical Sciences at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona, as a class of hallucinogenic substances that offer medical benefits in the treatment of psychiatric and psychosomatic illnesses. From a scientific perspective, the professional study of the fungi mushroom belongs to the field of mycology. According to a recent study led by researcher Steeve Bonneville (Universite Libre de Bruxelles, 2020), the first mushrooms, not satisfactorily classed as plant or animal, evolved on earth between 715 and 810 million years ago, 300 million years earlier than the scientific community had previously believed. Mushrooms have a long history, with some species reputed to have a long life span; and yet they remain relatively alien and mysterious to us; revered and, at the same time, even feared. Despite this worship-fear relationship with mushrooms, humans have consumed them for as long as there have been written records, and most likely they were consumed long before that. In world cultures a deep spiritual connection with mushrooms remains ever pervasive. This 8-stanza extended Tanka poem introduces its readers to the love-hate, worship-fear relationship of humans with the mysterious fungi family of mushrooms that, like humans, inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. more »