Have you never tried to hold ferns
feathery ferns
overgrown ferns
ferns rippling

have you not
thrown yourself on the ground
to study the underside of ferns
veiny leafy ferns
ferns waving

do you not see now
how inadequate
our grope for words,
picture undulating
tongues tipping
toward the verdant

do you not know
how deficient
this fumbling
when once-fleshed
girls, boys
sleep under beds
of ferns
 
how futile
to reach for ferns
to know fern-ness
to wonder what Plato
would have said or Aristotle
about the nature
of ferns
   
a keen green
keening
in sun stains
ferns en masse
a jungle of ferns

all over your body
ferns
O little boy
your voice
never quieted
it rasps on
and I cover you with ferns


By Reka Jellema
September 2014

Not your death
or the Maui lip-curl surf
in the poster above your head

Not the knife-juggling
French thespian I crushed
or the jeune fille he couldn't save
in the cinema

Not the white pines looming over us
casting shadows longer than the names
of your meds
those spindled pines aloof, cruel
needling our skin

Not the last frame
in the last post-apocalyptic
TV show in the last home
in the last living room
    can
after all the calico cats
and Polaroids of Mom and Dad
    cleft us

Was it how we grasped
at hands clutched each breath
close to the chest
hoarded oxygen in tiny sips
kept our setter's feathers soft to touch
on the green couch

your hospital bed with its accoutrements
knobs and railings the trappings of an end
glinting in late afternoon sun
October-yellow leaves
forever diagnose
forever

a settee for last days
equipped with dubious apparatus
the slurp and whir of the respirator
an exercise in improvisation,

    this living

these arteries full
of toxins these veins and tendons
elastic and sunken
munchkin you shied
from this living

I hid with the Freud squad
watching reality
on a flat screen
blood drug-muddied
brain chemistry compromise
the day the white coats
bagged you

    this living

this dog petting
we had to reach
to stroke our setter's ears
it was our ritual
he licked and licked
cleaned your feeding tube
your heavy lids half drawn watching
fluids sink and resurface

   Not your death

Not your death
nor the Thai goddess bong hit
incantations of Aurelio Rodriguez
or sky miles leading straight
to cumulus
     can
after all
the spit-up and graves dug

Not your death
or the heavens
looming like cliffs
     can
after all
the chemo & burial
rift us