the fullness of a day

 

 a stunning wildflower day

the mountains still call to me,

"the mountains," our shorthand for our familiar Smokies,

where slope and stream draw us,

where ancient woods call us:

as new as each ephemeral wildflower,

as old and pregnant with memory 

as each stone revealed by time,

as the day creeps into being,

I sit down by the creek

and watch shape and color slowly return:

first rounded green mounds, 

soft with age and mystery,

with patches of light grey

where lichens prepare the rock for later moss,

green shades to black

as rhododendron leaves reach into the lightening sky,

silhouettes appear between my eyes and the sky,

lines appear, branches against the sky,

the forms of an art nature quietly, audaciously

expresses as imperative,

bush and tree reach from the ground toward the calling sun,

the early light is softly diffuse,

the world seems to slowly wake up,

it's as if each day we await the curtain's rise

and for the show to start,

the light subdued till all is ready,

effects of the Great Fire appear:

trees gone, others weakened and felled by great storms

that have worked through here,

falling trees wreak havoc 

when they crash against living trees,

the view before me a tangled mess

of trunk and limb not yet close

to the grand return unto the soil,

nature needs more time to clean up this mess,

for decades a great old pine's trunk has held its shape

and reached across the creek,

full enough of resin still to hold

as if in an open casket,

looking much like its old self,

its fall was from the normality of reaching its life-span

and giving up the ghost in a high wind,

as the day comes into its own,

we seek out favorite spots for spring wildflowers,

we find many to savor:

profusions of white trillium and fringed phacelia,

interspersed with trout lily, Dutchman's breeches, violets, and more,

spring has come quickly, though, and denied us our favorites:

the moments of glory of blood root,

the exquisite perfection of hidden wild ginger flowering,

yet, in the word of a fellow wildflower lover,

the world around us is "stunning,"

"stunning" is what each day walking in nature should be,

today fully fits that daunting charge.

by Henry H. Walker

March 30, ‘23