Ferntacular!

Opening the bible, as I often do, I stumbled upon The Red Fern which I really like.

The large-leaved day grows rapidly,
And opens in this familiar spot
Its unfamiliar, difficult fern,
Pushing and pushing red after red.

There are doubles of this fern in clouds,
Less firm than the paternal flame,
Yet drenched with its identity,
Reflections and off-shoots, mimic-motes

And mist-mites, dangling seconds, grown
Beyond relation to the parent trunk:
The dazzling, bulging, brightest core,
The furiously burning father-fire...

Infant, it is enough in life
To speak of what you see. But wait
Until sight wakens the sleepy eye
And pierces the physical fix of things.

I had never really looked at a red fern but this one is growing out of rocks it seems. There are a bunch of them all nearly identical.

I think this poem is merely describing the fiery red fern in the first three stanzas but the last one is what really piqued my interest. It almost discredits the first three. I believe he is saying that you can talk about, write about, and describe, or try to illustrate certain beauties in life but sometimes words will just not do the object justice. As here, the fern was just an opaque and lifeless image in my mind until I googled it and realized how amazing it really looks. Further, these pictures probably do not do proper homage to the actual living thing.