"I wish you'd gather / these colored leaves in your sleeves / and carry them out"

I am more pleased than I expected to find there's a Kokinshu poem about going mushroom-gathering with one's father. Well, it's really about autumn leaves, the dying year(s), and missed opportunities. And other symbolic things, I'm sure. But really -- how many classical literatures have poems about hunting 'shrooms with Dad? Fewer than you might hope.

Bonus link: a portrait, as imagined a thousand later, of Ono no Komachi as an old woman. I like this one a lot -- that's the face of a woman who has lived a lot and made her peace with it all. (Note that's a gravestone she's sitting on.)

---L.