Classic Poem

Skeleton fork fern – Psilotum nudum

Without roots and prefiguring
the shaping of ferns
bronze bright in the sun cleft
along a wet fault line
viewed as if undiscovered
by traffic shouting underneath.
Growing is not clinging
abiding, travelling daylight.

Before our classifications
the transformations of light
catch on stony strata –
plumb, fugitive
lush walls and gullies
dream of a gondwana
holding in rock’s pushed layers
a wash and bloom of oxides.

The government of seasons
millennia, displacements
the tributaries and falls, variances
land and sea before time stolen
for power, where words fly up.
Harbour hauls and surface trades
with wind wing and sail out there.
Here the wall, crevice anchorage
after, and now
in this messed up
abiding
daylight still holding.