Father's Day, Upstate New York 2014

Walking out mid-summer mornings to find

Treasure of white mushrooms

Peppered in the brown-black soil

Of Sussex fields

Pushed up in the country night

Beside cow dung and clover

More magical than a rabbit from a hat

You led us to the best of pickings

Let us think we’d found them ourselves

Praised every find

We marched the fields,

Boots shining with dew

Knew the names of plants and birds

The natural order of our country life

Because you had taught us those things

Back home we wiped and sliced

The cap and stalk in half

You threw them into hot

Butter where something happened to make

The best breakfast in the world.

Ate, laden on toast, tasted the earth at its most bountiful -

Did we know how lucky we were?

40 years on in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains

You ask if I remember mushrooming

I do.