Fern, That Argoverdant Arch-Albatross
Tree ferns tower over my head,
bark armored by primordial
plumes like the flightless archaeopteryx.
All shapes a Chinese paper-cutting artist
can imagine, a leaf can also. In the beginning
the leaf was a wing. From per — to lead, pass over,
that which carries a bird in flight — comes fearn,
filix, pteris. Feather plant. Draw any cute
or fantastic or grotesque or baroque
or rococo or art deco or art nouveau shape
and some kind of fern would have found it
the exact fitting template for its flying suit.
It has sewn neat rows of sporangia into
the webbed seams of leaf-veins. Buttons
are meant to stay stolidly on and hold
folds together, but these small round brown
boxes reach their entelechy by bursting
to spread their kind wherever wind or water
carries them in flight. Magic dust sprinkled
from rooted wings whose element is not air
but wet, worm-swirling, fertile earth.
For centuries their flourishing had remained
a mystery. Like people once fancied that birds
of paradise had no feet and lived in clouds,
drinking dew and feasting on ethereal nectar,
they made myths about the fabulously invisible
seed of ferns: it births at dusk a small blue
flower the night before midsummer, ripens
in a blink of eye, and dies; it flies through
eleven pewter plates and lands on the twelfth;
it confers knowledge, treasure, invisibility
on those vigilant enough to elude fairies;
it guards against ill weather and dark magic.
It heals. It kills. The Devil spreads it as chaos.
It attends Christian rituals that celebrate light.
The first gods were trees. The first trees, ferns.
Stand beneath Dryopteris erythrosora or cycadina.
Turn over fronds of Cyathea dealbata. That silver
bird, Ponga, has flown from its ocean home
into dark woods. Its underwings’ reflected light
guides me to an opening. There I spread it out,
sew it onto paper barbel by delicate barbel,
write on a small card where and when it hovered
bowering me, who else witnessed the tryst,
transplant my memory of it to a hortus siccus.
LUCIE CHOU is an ecopoet hiking and gardening in mainland China. Read more.