Mushroom Picking Poem by C Richard Miles

We all picked mushrooms galore
On that mid-September stroll
From Hebden back to Grassington
Past the old sanatorium
Itself as mouldy as the fungal fare
We children gathered there.

Summer’s last sun glimmered
In the remaindered rotten windows
Frames streaked russet red with rust
Hung aslant and grimed with dust
Flapping silent watchers of our
Youthful quest for more.

We had harvested a few on the outward leg
But plastic carrier bag-less
We could only hold a handful
As we boldly gambolled
Like incongruous autumn lambs
In yellowing meadowgrass.

But, through some canny enterprise,
The single village shop supplied
Brown-paper bags blagged by mother
On some pretence or other
From the quizzical shopkeeper-fellow
For ice-creams, I seem to remember.
.
Then, like miniature marauders,
We invaded the sward as
If to steal the moon-round treasure
Which the moist mellow weather
Had hidden: silver-white moidores
In the green below brown-brackened moors.

Laden with the grey-gilled offerings, back
We trekked to the daytripper-crammed car park
Weighted down with our gains: sheer greed
Excited by our rapacious raid
On nature’s boundless bounty
That the hay meadows had granted.

The cottage-hospital is demolished, in its place
A swanky new red-brick estate
Homes rich off-comed-uns
Some from as far as London
But Wharfedale’s fertile fields will
Yield autumn mushrooms still.