Beauty of the fern

[grant hayes]

The beauty of the fern
- its green and morning turned
in fractal ends toward the burning
star, here caught and scattered - learns
no self of this shoreline;

takes a watcher to mirror, takes
an age to temple the second’s maths,
a heart to blinker out the clouds of gnats,
a somewhere else to make
this nowhere centre.

An eyed and halting vapour,
aping the solid soil and shape of weather,
holds the frond a wonder;
a child revering
the gone and warrior brother.

[amenOra]

Aw, so beautiful, from the rhythm which pulls you along, the crisp accentuations, and the smooth-flow of thought... you home in on the creation of something, before my eyes the growing flowers graphed. And then with stanza three throws up the image, "frond a wonder", and breaks the heart with some 'pathos' --
you flesh out a relationship which is not overtly human, of course it's the fern, but all throughout you describe it in new ways, personifying in such a way that I get to contemplate "ferns" in general... and then the final pivot brings up the human in this, it's nice to end like that, with the rhyme, quite effective to wrap things up, in contrast. It almost raises a question, it makes me wonder.
Imagery was great and rhymes were exceptional. Definitely one 'ineffable' in many ways which I can appreciate!
Thank you and Peace, Grant!

[amenOra]

ps I see it as the 'eyed vapor' nods to the ineffable that came from before, like the lineage of plants, from where they come and where they go -- that its warrior and gone is so beautiful I shouldn't spoil the reference with overstatement or something. I just really enjoyed that sequence, and its apparent significance. "Something survived beyond a vapor and lived beyond the shapes here" basically. Something!

pps: Brilliant... rereading it and with Johntee's hints... seeing much more. Nice!

[grant hayes]

Glad you dig it, amenOra, and thank you for such a detailed account of why you dig it. That you take the time to write thus makes me feel like my lines are communicating.

[Johntee]

To crawl ashore
set aside the sea
Carboniferously
build an era
giants strove,
Brobdignadian.
Still fern's spore
demands motility
must swim to fructify
in dewy mist the mystery
leaf on leaf employ
as in the past play
fractal geometry

[Parkinsonspoet]

The way you can analyse in poetic form both delights and explains. you have a unique talent

[Parkinsonspoet]

I am grinning now. I love the final line but it is much more than that. You show me things from an angle that would never have occurred to me

[AlexandratheLate]

When I read this Grant I felt like a child in awe of nature’s beauty, complexity and yet its simplicity. Truly enjoyed it

[grant hayes]

^ If I can elicit childlike awe with my lines, then I am well pleased, Alexandra. Glad you liked it.