The Alabaster Mossy Carpet by Paul Alexander

Our thanks to Paul Alexander who shared with us his moss inspired poem, The Alabaster Mossy Carpet, after a day with Art and Energy’s Naomi at St Petroc’s Church in Harford, Devon.

The Alabaster Mossy Carpet

The mossy carpet made of coloured wool

Shorn from the backs of Dartmoor sheep

Keeps faith with moss on Harford moor

Where spongey fields of sphagnum marsh

Keeps carbon captured in earth knee-deep.

Will art’s creation of coloured threads,

Inspire nature’s balance to our poisoned world?

Will balls of wool wound tight together,

Like pom poms held by gaiety girls,

Spur us on to greater endeavour.

A miscellany-of-moss changes the world they say

Providing numerous examples, explored today

When art and energy enter the fray

To bring about change

In a collective way.

The ancient story of miniscule life

Of nematodes, rolifers, tardigrades, live

In the depths of the earth

Creating nutrient-rich-soil

Is the answer to barrels of carbon-rich oil.

Being small is their strength,

Their limitation as well.

But their numbers are vast

And within one-single-cell

Thousands of species

Are happy to dwell,

With names such as ‘moss-piglet’

Or ‘water-bear-bearer’,

Agents of change,

Catalytic behaviour.

Gaia-tic in nature

Where a ‘slow-mover’ flows

Through rivers of water

With eight tiny toes

Munching mycelium

Wherever it goes.

Small actions repeated, so many times,

Turn tiny-moss-fibres

Into subscribers

Of collective endeavour:

Into moss habitat admirers,

Blanket-bogs, dangerous mires,

Quaking peatlands that quarter

Sixteen times their dry-weight with water

And two hundred kilograms of CO2,

More than all the forests in the world can do, per metre,

Into, something safe and sound

Keeping carbon underground,

Changing eco-logical disaster

Into, environmental, alabaster.

Paul Alexander 25th November 2023