Grow on me like moss

Learning to see mosses is more like listening than looking. A cursory glance will not do it. Starting to hear a faraway voice or catch a nuance in the quiet subtext of a conversation requires attentiveness, a filtering of all the noise, to catch the music. Mosses are not elevator music; they are the intertwined threads of a Beethoven quartet.
~Robin Wall Kimmerer

Moss by Matthew Rogers

My buddy Joyce sent me a completely delightful package for the Winter Poem Swap, complete with adorable wee animals for my mini garden, a journal, chocolate, and this wonderful poem:

Ode to Moss
by Joyce Ray

Woodlands hold trees and flowers,
critters and mythical folk,
play-fullness, seeds of promise and
you

who carpet Zen gardens,
Scottish moors and even
a childhood storybook where
Belinda searched for a friend.

We say, “A rolling stone gathers no moss,”
yet you, Sphagnum, staunched the bleeding
of WWI soldiers, lined the cradles
of indigenous babies, and

you, Peat, are the reason we have
bog bodies and Scotch.
Better yet,
you sequester carbon while

Africans say, “The people who love me
grow on me like moss,”
like soothing balm to ease the hurt
from rolling through troubled times, so

let me create a garden of still
stones whose only purpose is to grow
moss, and you will invite me in
to gather what I need.

***********

Random Noodling has the Poetry Friday round-up. Thanks, Diane!