Fiddlehead Ferns

Olive seashells

in the air

you can eat.

The very inner of the inner ear

in the breeze.

Last night my son dreamt

about falling

out of trees.

I had almost forgotten

that we were

simians.

The fiddlehead turns

on itself but only ever in love.

Green cinnamon roll,

a snake too small to hunt

anyone.

Curled in like my son’s

fingers, his fists.

More beautiful than

a spider fern,

spun-in island,

moldy tongue of a hippopotamus,

the eye of the forest.

When my son wakes up

screaming

I don’t pick him up

right away.

I tell him where he is and who

I am.

At night all the fiddlehead

wants to do is sleep.

When I sleep

I dream about death adders curling

around his soft

body,

all of us making the same kinds of sounds.