Scatology

Lycoperdon pyriformes translates as pear-shaped wolf fart, more prosaically they're stump puffballs, the only members of the species to grow on wood. When ripe,  puffballs require only a modicum of pressure to release their spores through a hole at the top, just as wolves break wind, perhaps.
Looking for a suitable poem to accompany my jazzed-up image I was thrilled to find this one by Neil Rollinson, a award-winning British poet I'm not familiar with. I realise it won't be to everyone's taste which is why I have provided a mild trigger warning in title of this blip. 

GIANT PUFFBALLS
Can I make it home, or do I shit
in the woods? I squat above the moss,
breathing its pheromones, my scrotum
shrunk like a walnut in the cold breeze.
I push quietly in case the dogs
on their morning walks come sniffing.
It drops on the leaves
with a muffled thud, and the smell
is like marzipan, not offensive
as it is against the clinical spruce
of the ordinary bathroom. It steams
in the dirt; the undigested sweetcorn
bright as stones in a brooch.
Coconut milk, rice from Shanghai,
spice from Afghanistan,
all remaking itself; feeding the trees.
I clean myself on a sycamore leaf,
smooth as a grocer's handkerchief.
And then I see them: pregnant
as fish bowls, weird as a hedgeful
of skulls. I pull one out of its hole
gentle as a midwife, palping the domed
head in my hands; I carry it home
on the bus; it sits in my lap
like a baby, plump, bald as an arse,
smelling of milk and cinnamon.

I actually have a book called How to Shit in the Woods, aimed at long-distance trail walkers in North America.  It's a serious subject because too much of it can have a negative impact on the  environment so the advice is to 'pack it out'  i.e. to take it with you to dispose of  via the drainage system.

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