Docker's Mushrooms
A man of property, a man of money,
he guarded the mushrooms which grew
in the sloping field he rented out
with the land-holding tightness
of a medieval seigneur.
So much so, that we joked they must
be dewed with diamonds,
were pearls in the crown jewels.
But, since we also tenanted
part of his domain (two up, two down
at one end of his large house)
magnanimously, he’d sometimes
bark permission to pick a few;
stiff-backed would designate us
a grass-hidden sporing spot:
Only enough for breakfast, mind.
Then he’d clomp off indoors.
We’d pick, wave a handful, smile
at his face in the kitchen window
on our way back. Out of sight
we’d laugh that he hadn’t sussed
how often we’d crept over the fence
in the evening dusk, poached
the full moons of mushrooms,
trusting that, come morning,
more would have grown.
Huddled on winter evenings,
sofa close to the warm log fire,
we’d fantasise on Docker in Heaven;
calculating, bargaining with God,
holding the counting frame of his life
as straight as he could.
He should be there, we reckoned.
Short as he was on grasping
the odd coldness of his ways, he always
evoked some pity; and pity, when all’s
said and done, is a form of love
and Heaven a place for the loved.
Page(s) 36-37
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