Ode to Fern

Listen up, people, let us all learn 
the rousing call of our family Fern - 
a hart’s-tongue song, a polypody anthem. 
Pinna by pinna, rhizome by rhizome, 
they’re asking the questions: why not? and who? 
(marginal, sensitive, cinnamon, blue). 

 

From taiga to Amazon, swamp to savannah, 
from tropics to tundra, there’s always a fern 
entangled and yearning 
discerning and urging 
we all ask the questions: why not? and who? 
(marginal, sensitive, cinnamon, blue) 

 

They’re warriors all, with beautiful blades,
some riding canopies, some hugging shade, 
tricksters whose fiddle-heads turn into swords, 
forest defenders, dragon-tailed, 
asking those questions: why not? and who? 
(marginal, sensitive, cinnamon, blue) 

 

They’re maidenhair mothers and hairy-lip males, 
hay-scented, silver leaf, golden scaled, 
ostriches, spiders, rabbits and squirrels, 
stag horns, fish tails, buttons and sickles 
all asking those questions: why not? and who? 
(marginal, sensitive, cinnamon, blue) 

 

Each turn of the earth, each vernal unfurling, 
each new warning of infernal warming, 
return to the journey of fern, let stupidity burn, 
spread insights like spores, hold your stipes firm, 
keep asking those questions: why not? and who? 
(marginal, sensitive, cinnamon, blue) 

 

Mandy Haggith is a writer, friend of Fern and founder of the European Environmental Paper Network. Mandy has just launched her latest book The Lost Elms: A Love Letter to our Vanished Trees – and the Fight to Save Them. 

Category: News