Moss is pioneering first aid
on the patio—niche work
prepping green-cross beds—
clearing access for the medics.
Hawkbit—the chief surgeon
on the groundsel team—
is scrubbing up to operate
on crumbling cement.
Cleansing—routine intervention—
has been outsourced—
weather gods irrigate the wounds
weeping grit—strike earth
and a crack team of daisies
and self-heal takes over—
applies chloroplasters—
administers the drip.
Columbines in masks will monitor the vital signs.
The moss leaves them to it—shifts to sheer paving—painstakingly extends
a second skin. In a decade it will have sealed the laceration. In a century
the patio will be ground to dust. In millennia there will be a web
of mighty forest once more spanning continental Panacea.
On the railways
buddleias
prolifically
apply
butterfly
stitches.
The tenacious moss runs a thin UV-line down fractured pavement.
Clare Bryden “Fractured”, ionosphere, Volume 2 Issue 2, 7 July 2025.