For nigh on a decade
Enchanted by tales
Of wildest places
Where rough edges
Bleed out to sea
Coarsing through veins
Lungs of the world
Clutching the land
For all its worth
From those who take, take..

I trip tentatively 
Through swathes of natives
Unknowingly trampling
Rare plants 
Smudging invasive seed
Into mud with sodden tread

No permission to collect
I take and take, greedily
Hoping vainly
To strike a fragile quill
A tendril root, a mere bud
To bring home all I love

But instead, I raised beds
Of shrunken dried specimens
Memories snipped from whence they came
Never to grow again.
Now I learn and dissect 
Identify how similar or different
The naming of all things
Already taken place
A namesake now only left
For stone engraving.