a deficit disorder

reordered by nature

sometimes when I’ve found the way

to work myself up into unbridled nature,

I’ve brought within me concerns

that pull my attention away

from the spirited cacophony

of mazing forest and fluidly live stream,

that bridle me as some worldly anxiousness rides me,

I remember well a gorgeously wintry snowfall up here 

when I could only think of needing a car

and figuring what monthly payments we might manage,

visions of figures dancing in my head

when a wonderland presented itself before my eyes,

today I wrench myself away from all the “doing”

that defines me and gives me self-worth,

all the connections I work so hard to build and maintain:

students, colleagues, wife, the needs of household and garden,

all those important ties that help tell me

who I am and that give me worth,

as I drive across North Carolina by myself,

I find myself alone and scared,

I question who I am and who I could be

without the ever-present definition

of me in connection to the other,

I love other people,

I see them, feel the effort of their being,

and applaud every step forward each can make,

yet I also get tired,

most important to me? my wife,

together we make a one,

even there, though, I need an absence

so that I can reboot

and find myself more present to each moment,

on the drive I feel lost for a time

until my systems start waking up anew

and I find wildflowers on mountain top and within the valley,

until I follow through on logistics

for bringing my students up into the mountains

from whence can cometh their own rebooting,

all of us can be disordered

when we suffer from the absence of nature,

as I start to write this poem,

five kids start up the creek:

exploring, yelling, discovering, rebooting their own selves,

now I need more to hear the silence of the woods

and the self-contained murmuring of the stream

than the exuberance of kids, now healing in nature,

so I wander up into the woods, deeper than usual,

and I almost realize the center before me,

the grounding I need,

until a multitude of bugs 

distracts me into annoyance.

by Henry H. Walker

April 29, ’16