potential inherent, and lost

Winter Solstice ’14

the rocks and poplar trunks, straight as plumb lines,

are gray as the clouds that keep hanging around,

this morning I climb out of one valley

and, as I come up the ridge, the sun comes up the other side,

and brings out the beige in the beech leaves still on the trees,

witch hazel is a-bloom:

pale yellow flat tendrils of flower

incongruous as all else retreats to assert some other day,

I can’t tell if it remembers summer or anticipates spring,

or is just contrary, as it celebrates the sun at its weakest,

when devotion is least to be expected,

and most needed if hope is to become real,

yesterday, I marveled at a deep green pool up Big Creek

where great sandstone boulders joined together

so that the flooding stream would deepen the hole every time,

and here, too, witch hazel bloomed, just above the hole,

the witch hazel reminds me to hope,

the forest asleep reminds to to remember

and to anticipate when potential remembers to release life anew,

the story repeats but it can forget

who starred in the prequel,

at this time, I feel potential open to release in the spring,

and potential cut off, the way forward lost,

and I feel lesser in this world as the next world gains so many,

I hope to still be here more and more tomorrows

within which the losses I feel today will still be with me.

by Henry H. Walker

December 21, ’14