Thursday, August 23, 2012

of a hummingbird and our students


watch them fly!   

the school year slowly starts--
as we drive away a bit over an hour,
and connect with others, and our charge, somewhat,

we return to our homes, and pause for a day,
 in individual readying, or avoiding,

we come to the school’s campus the third day
to ready ourselves for the year with a meeting for all
so that we can connect with mission and logistics,

not long before the scheduled start
those of us already in place see a hummingbird,



up among the lights, frantic to find a way forth,
and, for those of us who see her,
we fear for her,
we fear a bad ending to the forging forth
that led her into our world of closed doors
and no flowers that need her, and that she needs,
we cut off lights to help her find a way toward the doorway,
for the actual rescue it takes someone to climb up to her
and gently cup her in his hands,
he then passes her down to me
and I walk quickly out the propped-open doors, pause,
then open my hands upward to the sky,
and she flies up and away,

so we hope to do with our students:
have them spend a time with us in our buildings,
and then we can joy as each flies away
to become the best each can be,

with the hummingbird, we hope no worse for the wear,
with our students, we hope they become even closer
to who they are and who they can be
because, for a time, each was in our care,
and that we held each only as tightly as each needed,
and that each was then primed to fly forth
into whatever future calls to them.

hummingbird image courtesy of Google Images

by Henry H. Walker
August 21, ’12

Saturday, August 18, 2012

what pulls the best from us?


motivation?   

what pulls the best from us?
is it outside or inside?

how do we keep going when the way gets hard?
how do we start going when the way forward looks too hard?

what pulls us from lethargy into
one step forward,
then another,
despite the siren calls around us
that call out to us
“it’s too hard,”
“it’s boring,”
“it’s too much”?

competition might wake us up,
a gradation along a scale,
a sense that we are better than the other,
a zero sum in which our “plus” needs another’s “minus,”
and often it’s not even a zero sum,
for the plus is one,
and the minuses can be many,

a better competition might be to contest ourselves
against what rings false at our heart,
to match our effort against the lethargy that calls to us,
to match our truth against how the universe unfolds before us,
to let the best in us create
and marvel ourselves with what has become
because we make the effort to call it forth,

we crave to be our best,
and we will get there if the power within us finds how to cascade forth, true,
true to itself, and to what makes the world a better place.

by Henry H. Walker
August 17, ’12

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

the cardinal flower blooms


Summer Ends   

summer ends:
the cardinal flower blooms and tells me
it’s time to go home
to where my better half waits
and to where I’m called
to be as champion to child after child
beset by the gauntlet of becoming,

in summer I also build and connect
and find ways to lose myself in the making,
yet summer is when I more easily
find time and space for myself:
to follow whatever wisps call to me in the wild,
to sing with my voice, my camera, my soul,
to the animals, flowers, rocks, and streams
which greet me in the morning,

summer recedes, the day drops away,
my “to do” lists call me,

the people, places, events, and things of the past crowd upon my thoughts,
I only barely imagine what will fill my heart and days to come,




























the cardinal flower blooms,
the sun sets,
it’s time to move on.

by Henry H. Walker
August 8, ’12

Monday, August 13, 2012

the apple calls


to question Mars   

yesterday I biked a few hard miles up the valley,
slow enough to notice and appreciate each foot of the way,
and then to glory in the windy rush of the descent,

late afternoon humid air climbed the same valley,
dropped as a hard rain that fell,
and then gloried within a roaring creek racing down the valley,

and, while the creek rushed, tens of millions of miles away,
a human-crafted spaceship found our sister world,
and carefully lowered a ton of vehicle onto the surface of Mars,

all in quest of our need to know,

our drive to know suffuses the rover,
the tool, the science all devoted to the question
of what is out there, beyond our ken,
for who are we at our best?
is it not to be the asker of the question?
and is it not the effort to answer that question?

we lost the Eden of blissful ignorance,
that time when we only knew the moment,
and not the other eternities that stretch before and after,

yesterday, for me, was of grounding in this place, here in the Smokies,
yesterday, for our species, was of reaching for the apple that we may know more.
 
 Rover images courtesy of Google Images

by Henry H. Walker
August 6, ’12

Sunday, August 12, 2012

to synchronize, or not


the herd and the lone   

humans are herd animals,
prey to the alphas among us,

we are attracted to the other, to the group, to big cities,

yet humans are also solitary animals,
sensitive to the group, and oppositional,
so that one can deliberately go the other way
just to be contrary to the herd,

within us are countless gears
that easily line up and interlock with chains around us,
and we synchronize our actions and opinions,

I feel the toothed wheels in myself
yearn to synchronize with nature’s chains,
and sometimes I just yearn to spin free,

how great it can be to synchronize,
how great it can be to be alone for awhile,
before the various driving chains grab hold of us again.

by Henry H. Walker
August 6, ’12

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

perfection is Scylla


perfection, the hard task mistress

perfection is Scylla
and not caring is Charybdis,
and the sane path between is hard to find,

as we go throughout life
we do what we can to do our best,
yet the best possible is never perfect,
and we are challenged by the degree to which
we should be proud of the items checked off
or cognizant of the items that still need a fixing,

complaisance can be tempting
and perfection is a hard task mistress,

our challenge is to feel and act on the charge to do,
and to do well,
and not feel too much the lack of checking-off
whatever items on the list
we haven’t gotten to yet,

and that another notices.

by Henry Walker
August 1, ’12

Monday, August 6, 2012

up the roller-coaster


the four year-old within

I used to think of the maturing of a person as a staircase,
where one might pause on a landing,
but it was always up till somewhere after middle age,

now it seems more a roller-coaster
with a lot of “up”
quickly followed by a lot of “down,”

though, like climbing a mountain,
the trail overall usually leads up,
and it takes a lot of effort,

to be four years-old is wonderful and painfully hard,
one is aware, sharply, whenever a turn becomes down

and sorrow pours forth
for the moment is all
and this moment is loss,
the way up is so joyous
that in these moments all of us around the joy
can be undone by the generative power released,



to be seven is to have more inertia about one’s trip up:
winds still buffet while the footing feels more and more solid,
the feet hold and head and heart build connections,
and can climb more and more surely,


I wonder how much the seven year-old
holds her four year-old inside,
a part of her buffeted all the time,
while another part of her
feels the weight of experience and confidence,
so that perspective can somewhat balance
by adding larger understanding
so that keeping true to the path is easier,

the seven year-old can absorb herself into a book for an hour,
live in the moment and stretch that moment long.
the four year-old within

I used to think of the maturing of a person as a staircase,
where one might pause on a landing,
but it was always up till somewhere after middle age,

now it seems more a roller-coaster
with a lot of “up”
quickly followed by a lot of “down,”

though, like climbing a mountain,
the trail overall usually leads up,
and it takes a lot of effort,

to be four years-old is wonderful and painfully hard,
one is aware, sharply, whenever a turn becomes down

and sorrow pours forth
for the moment is all
and this moment is loss,
the way up is so joyous
that in these moments all of us around the joy
can be undone by the generative power released,

to be seven is to have more inertia about one’s trip up:
winds still buffet while the footing feels more and more solid,
the feet hold and head and heart build connections,
and can climb more and more surely,

I wonder how much the seven year-old
holds her four year-old inside,
a part of her buffeted all the time,
while another part of her
feels the weight of experience and confidence,
so that perspective can somewhat balance
by adding larger understanding
so that keeping true to the path is easier,

the seven year-old can absorb herself into a book for an hour,
live in the moment and stretch that moment long.


by Henry Walker
August 4, ’12



by Henry Walker
August 4, ’12

Sunday, August 5, 2012

a bear and her world


a surety the world is hers

animals live their own lives
as each follows its stomach
and what seems most right at the moment,
squirrels, rodents, and roaches
live by us and with us
as if we’re bonded somehow,

a salamander can endure
our eyes, our touch,
and quickly gets back to its own world,

 

birds come to our feeders and birdhouses
and let us watch them, and appreciate them,
and otherwise they stay mostly in their own worlds,

yesterday a great black bear
walked down the road and we chanced to notice,

 she had no fear of us, just a caution
and a hope that food might appear,
she looked, she sniffed, and she kept about her business,

almost imperious in her surety that this was her world,
and she was moving through it,
thirsty, she went to the creek and calmly drank,

and then she ambled slowly off,


we were like trees to pass, not even mosquitoes,

she came, she saw, she did not need to conquer the world
for it was already hers.




by Henry Walker
July 31, ’12

Saturday, August 4, 2012

experience passes o


what was, isn’t

I wonder:
does a jigsaw puzzle, solved,
ever feel sad as pieces are pulled away?

Buddhists can create sculptures of sand
which least a brief breath
and then the grains slip away from each other
and that which was, isn’t,

we pull together family and friends,
the logistics of things and the dream of what can be,

we ready ourselves to work our way up a mountain,
to open ourselves on top to know people and place and experience,
more fully,
more deeply,
than the hypnotic regularity that day-to-day can become,

while in the moment I only occasionally feel
past and future come at me,
yet when I’m down the mountain,
and people leave, back to their own places and time,


 every leaving is a loss that diminishes me,
for a chunk of who I am
is the experience we’ve built together--
before, then up, on, and over the mountain--
pulls apart:
grains of sand come together,
and what is built in the material doesn’t last,

may we remember and treasure what was,

and what can be.


by Henry Walker
July 30, ’12

Friday, August 3, 2012

scribbles


substance over form

I scribble words down to explore what seems true,
and I spend little effort forcing hand and pen
into precision of shape of letter,
 I want what’s in my head and heart
to shape itself enough in words that I can remember it,
and the shape seems furtive as it attempts to slip away,

it can take me awhile to decipher what I’ve written,
as the writing seems more of scribbles than of care,

when the shape of a letter means a lot to me
I lose myself in form and substance slips further away,

almost like the knock on the door Coleridge heard.

by Henry Walker
July 31, ’12

Thursday, August 2, 2012

junk food for the soul


save us from distraction

not always do we know what we want,
for what we want and need at our deepest
can be denied when distraction comes easy,

we need to open ourselves to the source,
to the primal, to the first movers,
yet the immediate, the sensation, the easy word
draws us and we can be no better
than a moth flying into a flame,

nature, with original energy, needs us to notice it,
to lose ourselves in rhythms and melodies not just our own,
yet, just as we love junk food for the body,
we swallow junk food for the soul,
whether in the words of an “expert”
or in our tendency to circle and talk
as if what we facebook together
can protect us from an emptiness that calls to us,

we need the harder path
so that the source keeps us from losing ourselves
in the secondary, in the tertiary,
the social candy that leaves us empty,

and yet it is hard, oh so hard,
to slow down and receive,


until we can hear the wind.

by Henry Walker
July 29, ’12

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

clearing the clutter











clarity

hard work can shake away life’s extraneous clutter
as if to remove any blinders that lead us away
from what is most vital,

I hike hard up a mountain
and I become conscious of myself as body:
eye and feet to find the step,
leg, heart, and lung to move me up the trail,


and I become conscious of myself as spirit
as fern, fungus, and flower are there for me,


as well as vistas,
so that while I am most within me
I can be most outside of me,

today, even the air is clearer,
the sun sharper as light is not blurred
as it shafts through the forest,

a haze of clouds swallows us at sunset
as if to remind us that weather can be more of grey
than the black-and-white of distinction,

 

in the hours before sunrise, the clouds go away
and the stars are diamond white points
who prick the emptiness we call black,
even the Milky War visible to remind us of our neighborhood,
shooting stars flare in quick bursts of life
as that beyond us touches us,

dawn takes its time to bring color back into the world,

the eastern horizon like an art teacher,
showing us different palettes of blue,
a ridgeline becomes individual trees,
shades of red, rose clouds all around the sky,
and Orion dissolves, though Venus and Jupiter last awhile in the sky,

the Sun pulls herself up over Mt. Guyot
and a new dawn awakens the world,


this trip up, on, and over the mountain always wakes me up,

and I strive to remember the clarity I feel
when the clutter shakes away,
and I can be back and real.

by Henry Walker
July 29, ’12