This Mossland Will Conquer

‘Chat Moss brast… first corrupting with stinkinge water Glasebrooke, and so Glasebrooke carried stinkinge water and mosse into Mersey water, and Mersey corrupted carried the roulling mosse, part to the shores of Wales, part to the isle of Man, and some unto Ireland.’
— John Leland, 1526

This mossland will conquer its bunds
by the power of cottongrass and rain and sphagnum
it will defy the ditches and the drains

we built once upon a time and now block
with plastic piling, bunds and dams, malls and spades.
This mossland will conquer its bounds

growing millimetre by millimetre a year
it will conquer Little Woolden, Great Woolden, 
Astley, Worsley, Bedford, and Barton.

Flooding the Glazebrook and the Mersey
it will wash up on the shores of Ireland then riding oceanic 
currents it will conquer every continent.

This mossland will conquer the world,
the universe and everything beyond the human imagination.
This mossland will finally conquer us.

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Lorna Smithers

is a poet, author, awenydd, Brythonic polytheist, and devotee of Gwyn ap Nudd. Her three books: Enchanting the Shadowlands, The Broken Cauldron, and Gatherer of Souls are published by the Ritona imprint of Gods & Radicals Press. She works as a trainee for the Wildlife Trust restoring Lancashire’s precious peatlands.