into the Smokies

find the still center

what are the voices within us
that it’s devilishly hard to ignore?
I think it’s other people,
I think we’re wired to be social,
to reach for ourselves in banter back and forth,
in the validation of performing and being performed for,
we love to feel connection,
we love to be entertained,
we crave stimulus,

and we can feel lost when we’re by ourselves,

I contend, though, that even more as we reach outward,
we need to reach inward: we need to still,
to not dissipate ourselves in frenetic grasping
of who and what’s outside us,
for most of the time we only touch and cannot hold all that other,
instead we first need to get to know the center within,
as a first step we need to fit ourselves
 back into the natural world


 
 

 
 
where we can feel awe,
then perhaps we are ready to feel the awe
of what we can create
when after we find the center
we can leap forth,
for then, as we express, our voice can be worth hearing.

by Henry H. Walker
May 21, ’12

mountains uplift

mountains resist the leveling of sameness,

I am drawn to mountains--
my eye wants to soar up their slopes,
my feet want to follow my eyes
to find what’s just ahead,

at the top I love to hold the world in the palm of my hand,
and, when the sky swallows me in cloud at the top,
 

I want to learn how to forget the large for a time,
and remember how to hold only what is just before me,
in my eye, in my camera, in my heart,

mountains pull water from the sky, as well as from my eyes,
and they shape water’s falling back to the sea
and offer us rapids, pools, waterfalls in celebration of journey,

in our words we can speak of being uplifted,
the very term like a mountain,
we feel God to be above,
our best to be the highest calling,

in mountains I feel I’m home,
and, like a parent,
they pull me up to be better and better.

by Henry H. Walker
May 23, ’12

beware the whisperer

a voice within
whispers,
just when you want to go out a door,
it whispers that you’re not good enough,
that you don’t really get it,
that, if you step through, everyone will look
and know that you’re just faking it,
you’re an impostor only pretending,
then you can feel others are real
and you’re not as good as them,

whereas I think each of us hears that same whisperer
and self-doubt is the self in front of far too many,

a calling I feel is to see through the doubter in front,
 and celebrate the true self, hidden behind, as it steps through,
and new star after new star can have its time in the light,
and all are brighter when each of us steps through that door.
 

by Henry H. Walker
May 24, ’12

doors into wonder   

Alice finds a rabbit hole,
Lucy a wardrobe,
Meg and Charles Wallace a tesseract,

like each of those characters
we readers are drawn to the adventure
just beyond the ordinary,

I think nature herself is full of entrances into wonder,
which open when we open,
and, when we’re not ready, we see no portals,
we see only shapes that can seem as if a wall,

 
 

 

 

 

 

I watch as a little salamander opens a door for a student,
a snail for a colleague, a bear for some struggling on a hike,
flowers open for others,
vistas open us all,
water pulls us through into its magic,
as does the bark of a tree,
the feel of a rock,
a tadpole opening into legs and the air,

we need to let the Alice within us
follow the rabbit into wonder.

 


by Henry H. Walker
May 24, ’12