moss lesson

Tina Urso McDaniel 2017

cell
upon cell
upon cell

Invisible, microscopic at first
So slow, you don’t even know it’s there

But it knows, grows,
patient.
It has
so much time

Some try very hard to bend it to their way of thinking.

“Grow here!” they say.
“No! Not there. Over here, on this rock.
What is the matter with you?!
You grow everywhere else but here.
I want you here.”

Methods of violence have been attempted.

Blenders, chewing the green back to component parts,
Oiled with buttermilk for good luck.

Moss just laughed.

Designated rocks and cement walls,
Dripping with green-milked slurry

The ants wondered at their luck.

While they weren’t looking, moss snuck off
finding a nice sidewalk crack to settle into,

out of the way,
dark but
not too much.

The gardener had no inkling,
continued checking daily for signs of life on the assigned rock.
“It’s there,” they told themselves;
“it’s microscopic at first.”

They gave up, threw things, then
One day walked past the crack and noticed

All of a sudden

A whole colony had formed
In a lovely (had they eyes to see) mound
Exactly where they had attempted forceful removal

three months ago

They stomped it in anger,
Even though it was out of the way.

No matter, moss was going nowhere

It settled deeper into its crack,
Rolled out and over into several nearby

Such upheaval seemed
The perfect time

to expand
its territory.