the past informs my present

 

where the bodies are buried

who I am is also who I was,

the past informs my present,

those who have died continue to be

real and almost present to me,

today is of the grave,

I devote the hours of the morning

in pursuit of where the bodies are buried,

a way to pull the spirit of those gone

back to where I can again feel the "I. . . Thou. . ."

of who I was, who they were, 

and how we were and are connected,

1st, I find Bob Sweeney's grave,

and I appreciate its unique headstone, 

like the mountains themselves,

naming him, his wife, his children,

though the fullness of Bob flees from me

and yet cannot retreat far or fast enough

for me to not feel the glory within him

that ached to release itself, and often did,

2nd, I am daunted by Sam Hurst's grave,

I get to within maybe a half mile of it

but I do not have a guide to the road, the path,

up the rising mountain to where his body rests,

Sam was of the mountains, and, like the mountains,

always somewhat beyond what I can hold,

3rd, I stand by Jimmy Tipton's grave,

so near where he grew up, 

close by where he liked to sit by a pond, 

and think, and study,

it's just four months since death claimed him,

though it did not quiet him,

for the efforts of his life

ripple in the goodness he gave so freely,

for us, he set up a trust for my mother,

without which, Jean's Dream of a gateway open to nature wild,

would have closed and been lost to Mammon,

I cry in our loss, and in how hard it is,

we can hope to honor Jimmy with our own lives,

I drive further north into South Knoxville,

4th, I stand at the foot of the graves of my mother and father,

whose lives were a triumph of the best possible

within the limits of the tools available to them,

Mother paid for a metal cup at the graves,

so I add water and boxwood cuttings 

from our cabin in the Smokies,

a small tribute I often leave when I visit here,

every time I stand at  a grove of someone important tome,

I pray that they are at peace,

and that I can honor them with the substance of my own life,

the past continues to be with us,

who I am now remembers,

my final stop is in Pigeon Forge, on a hilltop, 

with the Smokies towering triumphant above the flat plain of this valley,

5th, there Lucinda Oakley Ogle rests and calls softly to me,

twenty years since she breathed her last breath,

yet her smile, her laugh, her stories, abide in me,

her appreciation of the glory

in slope, in leaf, in flower, in the bear,

in the tales of the Scotch-Irish who replaced the Cherokee here,

they who knew this land better than they knew themselves,

when I wander the valleys, the hollows

below Mt. LeConte's dominant upthrust,

Lucinda continues to be with me,

and reminds me to embrace every moment,

here where very moment deserves wonder,

today was of rekindling that fire of remembrance,

how better to build a goodness in the future

than by remembering the past

and keeping it alive within us while we can.

by Henry H. Walker

July 26, ‘23