Where It All Goes Down
The speaker paints a dark and eerie picture of mushrooms pushing their way above ground on a forest floor. Lines like "Soft fists insist on / Heaving the needles, / The leafy bedding" really do the trick (10-12). Can't you just see this creepy place? She also broadens the picture, though, giving the image of the mushrooms pushing up through sidewalks as well. So it's like the mushrooms have spread from their forest roots to the city, too. Whether in the city of the woods, though, the mushrooms grow quietly in the moist dark where they "Diet on water, /
On crumbs of shadow" (19-20). Overall, the setting evoked here is perfect for the overall metaphor for those oppressed people, who society forces into the shadows and yet who still manage to spread throughout this dark scenery in a bid to overcome it.