Mushroom

Mushrooms by Kenneth C Steven

The night before a great moon full of honey .
Had flowed up behind the hills and poured across the fields.

The leaves were rusting, the wheat whispered
Dry and gold in the wind's hands.

Andrew and I went to Foss. We drove over the hills
That were blustery with huge gusts of sunlight.


We stopped and walked to the loch, left two trails
Through the grass, came on the mushrooms by accident.

A village of strewn white hats,
The folds of their gills underneath as soft as skin.

We almost did not want to take them, as if
It would be theft - wronging the hills, the trees, the grass.

But in the end we did, we picked them with reverence:
And they broke like bread between our hands, we carried whole armfuls home,

Pieces of field, smelling of earth and autumn;
A thanksgiving, a blessing.