We enter the green forests where treeferns

We enter the green forests where treeferns unfurl secret desire – long of tongue. Lichen scales a Mountain Ash like second skin.
Valleys plunge and mountains swell.
Cicadas scream: warn us that we will be lost.
We are lost, we are travelling into the past, a little faster than walking pace.
We are looking for ourselves waving at crossroads. We lean out, we wave, we are looking.
There’s someone at a back fence, their garden grows towards us, three grown ladies: a triptych of daughter, mother, grandmother.
They solemnly wave. Is that us, I wonder, waving frantically, is that us? Which one am I?
I am still waving, though the train’s long gone. I go inside with my mother, with my daughter and pour each of us a cup of amber tea, leaves drift below the surface.
The forest is still growing. I can hear it from my kitchen. The whispering of stringybark, the throaty husk of fernsong. I have forgotten to tell you about the birds.