[with two poems by Malaika King Albrecht]
Charismatic Megafauna is what people hope to see when they visit Great Smoky Mountains National Park. If traffic barely creeps approaching Cades Cove there must be a black bear feeding near a pullout; if traffic stops altogether Mama has cubs. And if cars are pulled over for a mile along the prairie verge leading to Oconaluftee Visitor Center it means elk are grazing the pasture.
From the center lane I saw the big bull with six-foot rack and a harem of twenty and I slowed but I didn’t stop: the gate into Tremont would only be open from 4:00 to 5:00. It takes at least an hour up and over New Found Gap down to Sugarlands and on west into the Park. Fifteen of us will be arriving for a naturalist course on this final weekend in August, hoping to get personal with that other charismatic Kingdom – Plantae.
Trees, ferns, and flowers certainly draw many to the Smokies, if only for the deep summer shade and restorative air. Some people are even known to kneel. As winter unscrews her frozen vice we hurry to see ephemerals – trailing arbutus, hepatica, bloodroot. Then arrives the princess of spring’s reign, Trillium, including uncommon Catesby’s and Vasey’s. As we wind through the seasons we lust for phacelia, fringed orchids, lady’s slippers. But what about now at the tail end of summer?
Summer, the season of yellow: asters, wild sunflowers, goldenrod (19 species in the Park), but driving west on I-40 didn’t every weedy median present us with all these and more Asteraceae? Solid gold at 70 mph. Time to slow down. The hour for Latin and Linnaeus is after vespers with our books and guides. In this moment the growl of Harleys on Little River Road can’t penetrate the glade. The rumble of the river into its Sinks reaches us only as subsonic reassurance through our soles. All light has slipped bent drifted through tuliptree and hemlock to recline with us among shaggy green. We are crouched among the ferns.
So many different kinds of ferns. Notice blade and stipe, dimensions and symmetries. We “frondle” them to read the hieroglyphics of their spores. We smell them. We struggle to know their names.
But here’s another fern-like frond, toothed and divided but with a tell-tale: a spike of yellow flowers like sequins in the wildwood. Lean closer. Five-petaled, many threads of stamens, Rose family. Agrimonia, harvestlice, swamp agrimony, but let us name it rose-among-the-ferns. Let us name ourselves sit-and-notice. Call us one-more-among-all-small-things. Look closely. Kneel. The least among the most is what we have come here to discover.
. . . . . . .
Before, during, and after my summer visit to Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont I have been reading Malaika King Albrecht’s newest book of poetry, The Stumble Fields. If a work of art could be a facial expression her book would be a quiet, welcoming smile – the kind that lets you know she is about to share a great confidence. Her poems are revealing in the way sitting patiently in a quiet glade will gradually begin to reveal its true life.
And the spirit that often winds among her lines is, to me, that same spirit that leads us to desire to live truly in this world. Not to skip along its edges but to draw fully and be drawn deeply into it, discovering our selves as we discover the truths of our co-travelers. It is the naturalist urge – to find our connections at every stratum and station.
I am thankful to be connected to Malaika through her words.
. . . . . . .
Loftin Woods
I’ve wanted to be a single story,
so I could tell you a happy ending
but every breath’s different.
In these woods I’m lost enough
to notice but not lost enough to care.
I find my body when the barred owl
startles the air. I find
my body where white trillium
catches light. I find my body
in the music of cantering horses
singing to sky. Today I could fall
right through this fabric of grass.
. . . . . . .
Silver Tangle of Brambles at Midnight
Late night you remember God’s first language
is silence. The space between heart beats,
the pause before someone says, Yes,
a brief moment before ebb becomes flow.
So you say, Fine. Don’t talk to me
like God’s a stubborn ghost.
You say, I’ll hear messages
whether you speak or not.
Every closed-door signals detour,
and each broken heart demands
sitting quietly for a time.
. . . . . . .
From The Stumble Fields, Malaika King Albrecht. Main Street Rag Publishing Company, Charlotte, North Carolina. © 2020.
. . . . . . .
Hi Bill, delighted that you have featured Malaika’s The Stumble Fields. I ordered her book a few months ago and have found it a fine companion to my reading time, which is a lot these days. Her poems take us outside deep into nature, just as your beautiful writing does, Bill. And The Stumble Fields also takes us inside deep into the heart.
Thanks again for all the above and the delicate, lovely photographs.
Stay well, Diana
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Thank you, Diana, for reading and commenting. Were you able to take in any of the NCPS zoom meeting today? I always appreciate your presence.
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The prose, poetry, and photographs make me feel l should stop the car around the next curve and step in to the lusciousness of life, breathe in the scent on every petal, and run my fingers across the curves,circles, and circumference of life’s creation! So meaningful, and so well done. Thank you so much.
Take care, Deborah
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Thanks, Deborah. I once thought fields of yellow flowers were boring. How wrong I was.
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