Cameron Semmens, 'The Fern Cycle'
Cameron Semmons, 'The Fern Cycle'
“The Fern Cycle is about cycles and the healing power of being in nature – its ability to help us slow down and become more present to our bodies, our past, and our primal selves. It’s also about the capacity of words to memorialise our experiences so that they can continue to impact, again and again.”
– Cameron Semmens
Cameron Semmens is a professional writer and poetry educator who has published many books, including poetry, humour, memoir, and picture books. He runs workshops, designs books, and performs live. Cameron has spent many years living in the Hills, loving its community and its fecund foggy ferny forests.
The Fern Cycle
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 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, and each step
off-road, off-grid, on dirt, returns me
to an earlier me…