by Autumn Richardson
Camp 4
No sign of life, not a bird, not a plant.
Only lichens
clothing the sharp stones with grey.
A patch as big as a penny
can be more than a century old
here in this place
where vegetation is at rest
350 days of the year.
Deriving nourishment
chiefly from stone
the lichen is thus a plant
which in all
its poverty
has eternity before it.
Published online April 01, 2013
Autumn Richardson is a Canadian poet and musician. She lives in Cumbria, England, where she is the co-founder of Corbel Stone Press, an artist-run press publishing texts, music and art created in response to landscape, folklore, ecology and history. Her recent publications include Wolf Notes and Field Notes (Volume I) (in collaboration with writer/composer Richard Skelton), a micro-collection of poems, Crossing the Interior, released in Spring 2012, and publications in Orbis Literary Journal and Earthlines Magazine.