making community

openness to the other

I believe in community,

I work hard to help weld 

the disparate into a cohesive whole,

I know that like is drawn to like,

that we seek others to be with

who are friends, family,

the same gender, the same age,

I doubt, though, that anyone,

if another were just who we are,

would feel that other to be a best friend,

I wonder if magnetism has a truth for us,

that our polar opposite could draw us,

our culture, our world needs to learn

to embrace difference, to embrace the other,

whose difference opens us to parts of ourselves

that awaken then and let us enlarge who we can be,

while, at the same time,

we share a commonality of other parts of ourselves

that bond us to the universal.

when members of my family join me on my mountain adventure

up, on, and down Mt. LeConte in the Smokies,

some have only acted open to those in the group 

to whom they’re already close,

I have not re-invited them, those seemingly closed to the other,

those closed to the other have at times in my experience

also been closed to revelation in nature,

particularly the sunrise that takes effort to attend

and that can shake one to the core.

by Henry H. Walker

August 1, ’16