Shards - 15 - The Fern Cycle

Shards - The 1 Poem Podcast of Cameron Semmens

Today I take my hunchbacked heart for a walk in cathedrals of trees. And each step off-road, off-grid, on dirt, returns me to an earlier me – to a memory of milk teeth smiles and always look up. And with each step, on this day (I wish it always felt like this), my thoughts become more like dragonflies; and my muscles more like winter bees; and slowly the skin of my civilised self hardens and sheds – a cicada shell; and suddenly, from the outside, I can see the useless husk it was – so fragile and constrictive. And as I keep walking further into the forest all my straight lines begin to warp and twist like wattle branches; and all my black-and-whites are softened into shades of green; and all my human grandness shrivels and cowers beneath a towering grove of mountain ashes. Fecund, meandering, I grow into my youth like a tree re-entering the seed. I am simpled; trimmed back to a beautiful potential. I know, in many ways, this cannot last; but I also know this moment is growing roots; this moment is digging in deep; this moment is going to sprout words and flower into poetry – I can see the lines, like leaves, already forming: Today I take my hunchbacked heart for a walk in cathedrals of trees...