a waterfall
rock can yield,
or rock can resist,
when a stream reaches down and finds bedrock,
a waterfall can be born, and endure,
we are drawn to it by its beauty,
or maybe by the power of the will of the rock
releasing the joy water feels when it falls.
the outside, and us
what is between us and the world outside us?
when our feet touch the soil of a hike
and our muscles labor to move us up,
we can be swallowed by nature,
where sun and shadow, rain and wind,
make us one with the outside,
what separates us?
our tools can,
we interpose our phone between us and not us,
trusting it for the weather
rather than reading the signs ourselves,
we can trust it to tell us what's cool,
how to act, how to feel,
woods, streams, peaks
don't need anything,
they just are,
may we, too, work hard
to just be ourselves.
by Henry H. Walker
May 23, ‘24
stepping over the mountain
seasons have worked upon these woods,
years, centuries, millennia,
ever since the first Indigenous peoples
felt a need to step over the mountains,
they paralleled the stream's cut of the rock,
and made a path to smooth out the drop-offs,
they and the mountain were as one,
like a dancer and their music,
I feel swallowed by green worlds
who hold the soil and sun
and lock us into their interweaving spells,
I listen to hear echoes from those First Peoples,
my steps hope to honor and echo their steps.
at a center
Gaia often whispers,
as with a May apple blossom,
or repeats herself with geranium after geranium,
or just stands assertive before me
as with a textured mountain,
at the top of a grassy bald called Max Patch,
She crescendoes with a rightness
that erupts and ripples away before me,
I am here at the center
as if at the hub of a compass,
and all the directions are held
by the circling mountains before me.
virtuosity in motion
in high school I took ballroom dancing classes
I danced in a musical,
where my dancing was far better than my singing,
I was asked to mouth words in songs,
my body more agile than my voice,
early in my middle school teaching years
I helped co-teach Israeli folk-dance,
a lot of circles and camaraderie,
when my son married into Judaism,
I taught Ma Navu at the party after the wedding,
this goy from East Tennessee knowing an Israeli dance
no other attendees did,
though the bride's father said he had seen it on a kibbutz,
I even had to vocalize the music
since the band did not have this music in their repertoire,
at CFS I have loved to appreciate brilliance
that I only vaguely understand,
yet skills I have touched enough to appreciate their story
for I know enough of that world
to marvel at what others create
with the right honed skills and prodigious effort,
the result of which appears natural,
like the grace of a waterfall or a flower's blossom,
tonight the middle school dance before me
was of virtuosity: dancer, dancers,
one, two, and more, one after the other,
moved body and soul across the stage,
by one's self, or with the other,
fixed shape and transforming movement,
visually the body tells a story,
even with gravity limiting how long and how far
body can rise before it comes home to grounding,
the audience particularly cheer when gravity is most held at bay,
the purpose of school, at its most real,
is to allow, even to facilitate
the student to tell their story,
the way their understanding of the universe
and their experience within it,
forces coherence out of chaos,
their positing of a "take" that they want to say,
tonight they want to say it in movement,
this evening I was undone by the power
that dance released upon the stage,
like others in the audience,
I cheered the virtuosity before me,
and I cheer each young person who tonight touched the power
that each of their lives can release
with the right opportunity, the right effort,
the right creation,
to honor the questing soul within.
by Henry H. Walker
May 16, ‘24
