The Flower that Breaks Rocks
He introduced his daughters to Ben Nevis.
‘You take the bearing. Line up the arrow,’
pointing to Moonlight Gully Buttress,
Minus One Gully. We didn’t care
until Dad found us a saxifrage. Its blooms
were spokes of the North Star.
‘Saxifraga means rock-breaker.’
Nivalis: snow-saxifrage.
Dainty Alpinist, chinking her roots into fissures
and fractures, like crampons in toeholds.
But I see now what he could only glimpse.
That she and the other Alpines – roseroots
and pearlworts – are scrambling skywards
until all that remains for them is cloud.
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