The Fundamentalism of Older Treeferns

Here, among foothills, back
There on the common creek
Behind the bucket commerce
Of flower farms, remnant treeferns
Are of old incited into many heads.

It needs, it would be
Down back creeks,
Under a rhubarb farm.
It can be five, six, even
Seven heads, or a haughty nine,
beyond the bulb nurseries.

On their hortatory-cultural
Single butts, split-branched
To rebranch again, in a
Flagrant wild flaring, a royal
Candelabra of green

Flame crowns: the outpouring
Hosanna of its divisions, the undivided
Fronds, an unequaled, rare
Fern fabric, uncurling that
Unknown Garden-nations’ flag.

Out of unheard-of lands, old
As Genesis, tongues of flame green
Are continually unfurling,
A culture grown of the land
Behind this tractored red mud;
That vogueless bog below us
In this overthrown world.

Well beyond our bought
Lawn-bottom beauties is
A genetic blaze out of another
Endangered, ignored land.

In a pocket lapse in the change,
Just a tract of forgotten creek
Lands, a scrap of simplicity
Breaking with candelabras…
Handed on to me or you
Like a religious pamphlet.


28 August 2003 © Wayne David Knoll
Burleigh/East Monbulk, Victora, Australia