Mushrooms Poem by Theresa Haffner

Have you ever gone out hunting for mushrooms?
Or been on a mushroom hunt
when you were only a child
perhaps with your grandmother or grandfather
out in the country
in a meadow or a woods
in early Spring
just after a rain
where the moss only grows
on the north sides of the trees?

And the mushrooms you find
don’t taste the same as
the button mushrooms
from the supermarket shelf
but instead have a kind of
wild “gamy” taste
like venison.

You may not think it’s possible
to find wild mushrooms growing
in the middle of a large city
like Los Angeles.

But it is possible to find them.

You just have to know where to
look for them.

Oh, by the way,
the Martians have landed.

Yeah, I was talking to a
Martian just the other day.

Same day I went out
hunting for mushrooms.