sunrise and sunset, on Mt. LeConte

open to revelation and balance

balance,

the Anasazi a thousand years ago,

in what we now call the Four Corners area,

celebrated noon on the Equinoxes 

with countless markers on a butte for the Sun to play with,

as if each were a celebratory firework

to remind them to hold the opposing and different as one,

the middle of the day in the middle of the year,

with night and day of equal weight,

I’ll bet they would have loved Mt LeConte in the Smokies,

whose heights stretch east to west,

and at each end, rock promontories serve for us as balconies

from which to celebrate the drama of the Sun in transition,

as it drops and rises through the horizon each day:

endings and beginnings, 

sometimes clarity and color,

sometimes shifts through gray to black, or black to gray,

Sunset from Cliff Top, Mt. LeConte 8/1/15

Sunset from Cliff Top, Mt. LeConte 8/1/15

Sunrise from Myrtle Point, Mt. LeConte 8/2/15

Sunrise from Myrtle Point, Mt. LeConte 8/2/15

Sunrise from Myrtle Point, Mt. LeConte 8/2/15

I want to hold the truth and rightness within dusk and dawn,

so when I’m on top of the mountain

I end the day at Cliff Top

and start the day at Myrtle Point,

I want to hold the balance as in Ecclesiastes:
“a time for every purpose under heaven,”

I cannot understand those who deny the power of daybreak

and who cannot and will not consider a rise to honor the dawn

and deny themselves a few hours of common sleep,

to be as great as the universe hopes us to be,

we need to open ourselves to be shaken to our core,

only then can we find balance,

as the universe elders us with reality.

by Henry H. Walker

August 2, ‘15