Shrooms to the Rescue!
Yorba Linda, CA
2023, Junior, Poetry & Spoken Word
Climate Hero: Professor Scott Strobel & his students, Yale University
There once was a girl who loved the Earth
She knew how much having a home was worth
She loved to garden and grow her fruits
She sang to her plants to grow their roots
One day she found out fungus could save the Earth
There was a mushroom that could spark rebirth
This mushroom grew in the rainforests of Ecuador
“It eats plastic!” the natives swore
“It needs neither sunlight nor air
It’s what you need for Earth’s repair.
You can put it in landfills and it will eat your plastic.”
“Are you kidding?” she cried. “That’s fantastic.”
It was a group of Yale students who found this special shroom
Thanks to them, our Earth is not doomed
It’s called Pestalotiopsis and tastes beautiful and sweet
Can you believe it is nice to eat?
It smells like licorice even though it eats trash
Let’s save our world from becoming ash
Reflection
Reflection
I love art of all kinds – from origami to singing to writing to painting. The moment my grandparents showed me the beautiful art of origami, I instantly fell in love because folding paper relaxes me. It’s the way I breathe. When I sing and act, I feel like a braver version of myself. I feel like I can do anything when I’m singing. I also love writing rhyming poems because I love playing with words to see how they can unexpectedly be coupled together. I also love painting landscapes because Nature calms me. Because I like gardening, the moment my teacher told me about a plastic-eating mushroom called Pestalotiopsis that needs neither air nor sunlight to live (which means it can survive in a landfill), I thought, "This could save our world from becoming ashes." I looked on the internet to see where I could buy some of these mushrooms to test it out myself. I also wrote “Shrooms to the Rescue!” so that other people could feel a spark in their hearts when they heard the news… and grow some to save the planet!