'soft innocent life,' a reactionary poem regarding moss

from willa beale

Will Edgcomb has told me
you question moss, do not see
the joy and beauty
in a sacred scrap of flora
resting on the forest floor.

you nitwit, you boob.
come, look: See the gold-green carapace below the sun's shimmering ellipses.
no, let me use better language: See the soft innocent life resting low
against the ground, over the roots, and along the perfect forest floor.
observe how the moss makes love to the low trunks of the pines.

in winter, i have longed for summer only that i may rest there.
only that i may lay my aching body on the old mother of the wood.
only that i may lay a picnic with a lover there, and read my stupid books.
only that i may feel the earth in my face as i breathe in her musk.
haven't you in winter ever longed for such a soft innocent life?

something isn't there in the dank shallow dusty effulgence of the lovely wood
where the small animals scamper up the pines and the dead woods list endlessly,
listening for the rain and sleet that may sink them ever lower to the mossy floor,
to the mossy floor where the pill-bugs and the centipedes and the marrowless bones
and the worms and the ancient leaves and the roots lie dense below the moss.

below the moss.
we dare not consider below the moss.
as the moss supports us,
the moss supports an intranet of things.
the moss is an interlude between small gods and the cosmos.

yet, when you consider moss, you never consider this.
you see a dirty ragged mop upon the floor, sopping up the rain.
it is queer to you, to love moss and rest upon it.
the verdant fractals do not appeal.
it is a foreign attraction, incomprehensible.

much there is like moss and all things.
comprehension decays like leaves composting.
the silt of meaning softens below the endless washing.
even the sun cannot penetrate, ensnared by the ineffable.
something there is like moss and all things.

thus i hope some day
you find in moss some part of something
you love in yourself, something compelling
revealing moss is like an old friend to a fickle thing like you,
patient, tender, yielding soft, innocent life.

— for K(ia Rio).