National Poetry Month

In 2006, we published Aiken Drum, a collection of poetry by Peter Sanger, editor of The Antigonish Review. Sanger has published seven collections of poetry, including Earth Moth (1991) and Arborealis (2005), a collaborative project with photographer Thaddeus Holownia. His recent prose work includes The Stone Canoe (GP, 2007), White Salt Mountain: Words in Time (GP, 2005) and Spar: Words in Place (GP, 2002). He lives in South Maitland, Nova Scotia.

“Fossil Fern” is from Aiken Drum and is reprinted in the Gaspereau Gloriatur: Volume 1.

from Aiken Drum
Peter Sanger

Fossil Fern

This is the gift of a laminar stain,
an etching of carbon whose
black turns back into green

if you taste it, pinnae
uncoiling, pinnules unfurling
as if they might fly

and flight were one frond away
from this throatful of fern
still growing. A slate of grey

clay is its ground, an earth
you can hold for colour,
shape, speech, all life

in your hands, where spores once
appeared to manipulate silence.

Copyright © Peter Sanger, 2006.