NaPoWriMo 2024: Day 4

Prompt: write a poem in which you take your inspiration from The Strangest Things in the World.

Blue Moonwort

She doesn’t know that she knows what approaches
As she stretches her leaves, leathery, thick, and flat
Another Swiss Alpine autumn end encroaches
Wet ice and cold snow soon her habitat

A Springtime sun warms the top few frozen sheets
Trickling moisture to her deep, iglooic tomb
The droplets wake her roots, combustion heats
Life begins to grow out of the tundric womb

First stem, then flowering buds push toward the light
The path cleared, melted by heat from the climb
To pause, to rest, would end her in a night
Her only hope, progress, to break surface in time

A carpet of stunning flowers, petals paper-thin and blue
Prove there’s hope beyond adversity, if for her, then for me, too