It only grows in high, elk-trampled fields
alongside flowers that take thirty years
to grow, and should it root, the soil is poor,
hail is frequent, and rain comes cutting cold.
The tourists yawn and drive into a cloud,
already bored by what eludes belief.
You have been looking for it all your life,
but are too ashamed to say its name aloud.
Goodness: archaic and embarrassing
as rhyme, fragile as an eyelid-skin,
and just as loath to grow. Take a cutting
of the sorry thing, fly it home, coddle it in
a warm glass, and see: without ice
and wind and punishment, it dies.