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Published: 27 Jan 2022

Wild Moment: Yvonne Reddick

"Dainty Alpinist, chinking her roots into fissures and fractures, like crampons in toeholds." Yvonne Reddick's poem celebrates the hardy plants that cling to the UK's highest mountain.

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.

© Yvonne Reddick

Rock folds

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