Where humans flail and gasp, moss waits, withdraws.
Its colour who knows where, it crazes walls
With memories of lushness. At a prod,
It straggles into scraps that drift away
To join the world’s detritus. Come the rain,
Its tiny cosmos plumps and greens again
And carries on. It colonises stone;
If others follow, that’s not its concern.
In a waste of his own making, Mungo Park
Observed (on what substrate, he doesn’t say)
A single brilliant tuft, and asked the Lord
For similar support. We can surmise
With reasonable certainty the moss
Was of this genus. We can’t speak for God.