Alpine Flower a Day: Gentian

Alpine Flower a Day: Day 27, Gentian (Gentianella bellidifolia)

– about the size of daffodils, except white, gracious and growing among tussocks on a mountain plateau!

– Jan 2021, thousand-acre plateau, Kahurangi NP

water

one drop on my finger

you come through 100 year

pipes from a wellspring

out west where the suburbs are spreading

around you, and you fall on elaborate concrete

facades, porches, driveways, re-sealed

roads and byways, rush in a brown mess

through wider drains, you have seeped

through the sewage of farms, run into

the mouths of drowning men,

stayed silent and reflected

the hoards of missing tourists

no longer flashing their apertures open

so they can name you

in so many tongues, so many syllables

and sounds as you drop

underground into hidden

rivers, carve boulders and down

through trees turned to stone,

until you bubble up and

up and the mist and the clouds

soak you up so you burst

and fall

on whales come up

for air across the Tasman

you quell the bush fires raging,

across the Indian Ocean

into the hands of African children

laughing, across the Atlantic

onto the heads of

fracking drills in mass graves

of seeds, and wherever, and

whatever has happened anywhere

will be written on the high plateaus

where I go tramping, come summer,

come the blooms

of the drought-tolerant gentian.

If you're interested in the inspiration behind this month-long series of 'An Alpine Flower A Day' about NZ alpine flowers and poems, you can find more in my first post: An Alpine Flower A Day Enjoy!