Monday, March 29, 2021

his music deep and sure

 

Walker Breland


some people are so good

that the fire of the Light they live

draws us to them

to let them heat up the coldnesses within us,


I think of the beach at Edisto Island

where Walker felt so at home,

and I think of him as being the morning Sun

shining on me, warming me,

making me ready for the day,

blessed by the sand, the ocean, the Sun,

and the gifts he so freely gave,


if a person was rude, it perplexed him,

and he’d wonder if they needed a cold glass of iced-tea

to help them find the goodness within them again,


Walker’s smile came straight from his spirit,













as did the twinkle of his eyes and ready laugh,

he knew that God is love,

love even greater than the wonders of faith and hope,


our world is full of noisy gongs and clanging cymbals,

Walker not only lived a life of love,

but a life of music his soul played through his hands,

as music touches us deeper and surer than words,

closer to the eternal rightness we call God,

a rightness Walker knew with ever fiber of his being,


I feel lucky to have been a cousin of his,

how much luckier it must be

to have been his wife, his child, his grandchild,

now his great grandchild,


how much luckier to have been 

one of those in the audience or the congregation

where the notes of the music he played

synchronized with the rightness of the spirit we call love,


anyone touched by Walker Breland 

is a better person for that touch,

may we all pay forward the gifts 

Walker lived and gave us all with his every moment.




























by "Little" Henry H. Walker

March 29, ‘21

their world should be theirs

 

the hobble of self-doubt


stasis needs an impulse to move,

a quickening of the static into melody,

an awakening,

as if the inanimate becomes imbued with spirit,

once started, 

movement needs guidance as to where to go

and how to get there,

too much self-doubt and stasis rules,

too much willfulness and arrogance loses the way,


I work with middle schoolers

who want to jump,

despite the weights adolescence straps to them,

who want to risk a leap,

despite the fears that hobble them,

who know that possibility can become probability,

that probability can become reality,

but they fear they cannot embrace such success,

no matter how much they want it, need it, even deserve it,


so they doubt self,

so they fear that failure is their companion,

they fear that confidence is arrogance,

and that there is no way their world is really theirs,

 

I joy whenever they find the wherewithal and the way

to release the powers with which they were born.


by Henry H. Walker
March 28, ‘21

who drives us?


 Curiosity


it little matters how good the vehicle is,

if the driver doesn’t know where to go,

or care to see what’s around the bend,

a vehicle is a tool

to be wielded in pursuit of getting to a “there,”

that draws us out of ourselves

into exploration and the hope of discovery,


sometimes all the driver can think about as motivation

is to be faster than others,

while, to me, I want my driver to be curiosity,

I love to be ignorant because then I can learn,

I love to be intrigued by question

and to play around with different roads to answers,


we are not cats,

the lack of curiosity can kill that within us

that most deserves to be driving.


by Henry H. Walker
March 27, ‘21

Wednesday, March 24, 2021

the singing from her


 Katie


there is a melody to the universe

that our lives might jam with with the sounds of our being,


many do well using their lives, their actions, their words

to contribute parts of the song, fragments of the melody,

some people’s lives express more

of that elemental rightness than others:

a trueness to self,

a seeing and recognizing the other,

a seeing and recognizing the underlying music

with the right humor, the right words,

maybe building the structures 

to allow the musicians, the grouping,

to be able to continue to play,


Katie, that is who you are:

you have made all of us better 

through our connections with you,

despite how what you have gotten back

compares with what you have given,

so that you feel more consumed then re-energized,


how wonderful that you can now give more back

to yourself, to your family,

to letting the well of your love fill back up,


the melody is always there,

and we all seek to harmonize with it,

thank you for your singing at school,

and may you sing well and surely with the others

around the campfire of your family.


by Henry H. Walker

March 20, ‘21

Monday, March 22, 2021

balance?


 Vernal Equinox, ‘21


metaphysically, this day should be of balance,

halfway through the lightening year,

hours of dark and light, equal,

though they mix for an hour before dawn

and for an hour at dusk,

here in the Southeast, after a cold February,

most trees are still winter-grey,





most plants hesitant,

the grass hasn’t grown enough to cut since November,

color comes to the yard 

from what we’ve worked and planted:

crocus, daffodils, hyacinth,





periwinkle, flowering quince,




the Lenten rose, January jasmine,




in the garden I’ve rushed the growing season,

since I have missed Persephone,

so lettuce has sprouted, 



sugar snap peas broken 3 inches into the air,



potatoes in the ground at the dark of the Moon in March,



summer tomatoes and tomatillos started inside,























we can be creatures of light

who warn the dark we’re coming

as the edge of night starts to fall away

and the day works to break,


the school year stumbles toward the end

as calendar, pandemic realities, and depleted energy reservoirs

cannot quite grasp the reality 

Earth and Sun celebrate as the seasons change,

college and professional sports also stumble forward,

and seek to re-find balance,


much of who we are

steps on the others’s toes,

while we want to dance like 

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers,

to make a whole with two equal parts,

despite the challenge of who leads,


balance is found more easily in the abstract

than in the lots cast by the universe into our days. 


by Henry H. Walker

March 20, ‘21

Tuesday, March 16, 2021

pulling out into revelation

 

the telling creates reality


an author describes her writing

of a world that came to her,

not full-blown but more like

she got to know it in steps,

as if it learned itself

in the telling of itself to her,

she described being surprised by its stories,

as if it had self-will,


this world came to be

through who she was

being able to pull the story

out of the ether,

as if the reality only came to be

in the telling,


the consciousness of the author

found the consciousnesses within that world,


we imagine God to feel alone,

until God makes a world

and self-determination peoples it,


the author, like God, is not of pre-determination,

but instead is open to what reveals itself

out of our control,

but within the love of other

that pulls us out into revelation.


by Henry H. Walker

March 15, ’21

inspired by Ursula LeGuinn, writing of Earthsea

Monday, March 15, 2021

the extravagance of the common truth


 poetic license?


I have never believed in “poetic license,”

for that “get-out-of-jail-free” card

seems to me to be a way to cheat,

to let fancy replace honesty,


I write of a bluebird nest,

full of beauty, and hope,

and a black snake intrudes

with its different beauty and hope,

and death for the baby bluebirds,

I have to change my poem,

I have to deny a license to let me fudge the truth,


I write of a cache of indigenous artifacts

heralded by a perfect spearpoint and broken spearpoints,

all from 8-9000+ years ago,

so I wrote of an early human here

in a golden age in a golden moment,

then I find a chunky stone and piece of pottery

in that same collection,

maybe 1000 years ago, two ages separated inexplicably,

till I imagine myself in that closer time

and that person finding treasures from far earlier

and joining their past to their present,


I could have used “poetic license’

and denied the conflict of dating,

how much deeper and truer my poem is 

by including and not denying,


for me the license I feel in poetry

is to risk simile and metaphor

so that I can deepen and expand the truth revealed,

so as to hold the elusive

that seeks to hide in the common, in the mundane,

I look for the diamonds that are there

even in the rough that can seem to laugh at our presumption,


the license a poet should feel and use

is to risk the extraordinary and the extravagant

to better reveal the common truth

that can use some help to be seen,

the diamonds are there,

though they can hide themselves well.


by Henry H. Walker

March 13, ‘21