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