Ferns

I’ve walked this path two dozen times before,
I know it well. I know each twist and turn,
each weathered rock, each storm-blown tree, each sand-
filled rut that threatens ankles unaware.
And yet today I walk on foreign ground,
transfigured unexpectedly by ferns
disguising all the old familiar tracks
and wrapping up the landscape like a shroud.
I try to stay with time-worn trails but soon
I find myself drawn down – against my will –
a channel carved by long dried winter rains
among the whites and browns and reds of birch
trees, butterflies, and other alien things.
I tread with care. I am in their world now.
A world of ant-filled cities, in the shade
of log-pile Matterhorns and catacombs.
An airport, long abandoned by the fox,
is bustling as the bees set off on long-
haul flights, and hurry back with heavy bags.
The channel deepens, I grow smaller still
until, at long last, I am one of them.
The undergrowth around is filled with life,
and death, and death-filled life, and I go on
beneath the ferns, the oak tree, gnarled and whorled,
and deep into the earth, into myself.
I thought I knew this place, I thought I knew
myself, but I am humbled by the weight,
the sheer un-human weight of all that is.
And then, just as I feel the wildness pull
me down, I’m blocked by tarmac underfoot.
The horses skitter, squirrels rage, at this
colossus apparating from the green.
Bewildered, reeling, I, with leaden steps,
relearn to navigate this strange new world,
a world I thought I knew. But now I know
that nothing that I know is as it seems
and, even now, the ferns grow on my dreams.

Rich Clarkson, July 2023