wanting does not make it so

 

heading toward the cliff

lemmings, and a cliff, are an apocryphal story,

the idea that a large group could somehow forget common sense,

self-preservation, and lose themselves to the herd,

even if the lemming story is not based firmly on actual events,

it expresses a truth we Americans are living these days:

countless smart, well-meaning folks

are emotionally hijacked and deny the obvious truth, in terms of climate,

that, if we keep going the way we're encouraged,

the cliff and the fall are our future,

the current administration worships the false god of fossil fuels,

the temptation of grabbing onto what we want to be true

and damning quantifiable, certifiable truth that shouts at us,

that there are cliffs ahead

and that our wanting something to be so

doesn't make it so,

we are in the midst of a lemming rush,

a truth deeper than whether lemmings can actually be that stupid,

I pray that we will wake up, and not be that stupid ourselves.

by Henry H. Walker

September 18, ‘25

Quaker Values

 

true to the roots

there is something very radical about Carolina Friends School,

for at its heart are Quaker values,

whenever we get back to those roots,

we are true to what "radical" means,

getting to the "root,"

a being true to what is most basic to who we are,

a literal grounding,

at its Quaker heart, CFS believes in both the individual and in the collective,

that we should spend our lives in journey,

responding to that of God in everyone we meet, and in ourselves,

that we should work to find good ways forward,

a school should see students truly, to see that of God within them,

and to help each realize the unique gift of themselves,

to embrace who they really are,

to believe in themselves,

to commit to become even better,

to build community whenever possible,

a school can be blessed with a staff

true to both their own roots

and to the rest of the mission of the school,

as the truth is continually revealed,

all can somehow hold the new and the roots at the same time.

by Henry H. Walker

September 29, ‘25

chestnuts and bears

 

Henry Chestnut Seed

over sixty years ago I first heard of the chestnut blight,

I saw the huge trunks of felled American chestnuts,

like huge white marble pillars from a long-lost temple,

they were all over the high hollows of my Smokies,

I admired their logs made into cabins and barns,

and split-rail fences,

the wonder of the tragedy of their loss, though,

was the devastating loss of their nuts for the eco-system,

imagine if corn were no longer available to the farmer,

for the chestnut was ubiquitous and hearty 

for humans, livestock, and native animals,

just as many of us now are people of the corn,

so were those at the time people of the chestnut,

I felt, then, for the bears,

who must put on pounds of weight each day

from the time of the Equinox, 

through the bounty of October,

during the last century only acorns

have been plentiful enough, most times, for their need,

the acorns' tannin a bitter herb to substitute

for the sweet, giving chestnut,

so over 60 years ago I planted several Chinese chestnut trees

at our place near Gatlinburg,

in my naiveté I imagined myself as Henry Chestnut Seed,

carrying and planting my chestnuts all over the mountains,

I didn't get that my trees would be non-native invasives,

and they couldn't compete anyway with the lordly tulip poplars,

Chinese chestnut trees stop reaching for the sky

once they're about a beech tree's height,

the poplar and buckeye and oak

would then transcend them,

and shadow them into non-existence,

now at our mountain place we have our Chinese chestnuts

bearing freely, and fully, in our yard,

hard by the national park,

for the first time, this week I am here

when the chestnuts are fully here,

today I watched a large, maybe 300 pound bear,

spend at least an hour finding and consuming the chestnuts,

later wild turkeys foraged the yard for bits of nuts not swallowed by the bear,

the next day a mama bear and her four cubs enjoyed what they could find,

I love it that I can see and revel

that my dream for another species

has come true enough to help some bears

to have chestnuts in their diet, 

a soft memory of the past,

soon they will search for white oaks,

whose acorns will allow their necessary fattening

and be less bitter than what their cousins can provide,

somehow I imagine they mourn the loss of the chestnuts,

I certainly do, and I also never knew them in their prime.

by Henry H. Walker

September 20, ‘25

in the between

 Fall Equinox '25

for the past few days the poplar trees

have been dropping brown leaves, sometimes in flurries, 

as if doing dry runs for next month,

a few maple and oak go along with the early dropping,

the weather has been dry, a few light showers,

from the Gatlinburg Bypass clouds mostly whiten the blue above,

so the first light unveils a mackerel sky,

with white puffs almost like fish scales,

the great mountain before us runs east-west,

so the line of its bulk point straight at summer's last rising sun,

the angle wrong for any delineation of slope from the increasing light,

grey mist settles on the valley and soft hazes the city below us,

my eyes scan up the vertical mile that this mountain rises

to where a dark grey coverlet hangs around its upper peaks,

as the sun climbs onto the sky

its grey wants to rose and settles on expanding

as iof to swallow the high slopes,

back in the valley four wild turkey graze on bits of chestnut

left where the bears have feasted,

this day is lovely and calm,

and we get a lot of cooking done, chores done,

lans furthered for what needs to be done

to fix a swing and a bench,

I want to notice this change of season,

to chronicle what this day is like here in my mountains,

the day and the night are equal today,

as if, for a moment, all is in balance,

despite the manic chaos emanating from Washington,

after today dark increasingly ascends and changes the season,

the growing season is ending,

and the trees will seem to celebrate the harvest

as their underlying color will shine forth for a time

the soft roundedness of the forest will drop away

and reveal the sharp lines of trunk and limb beneath,

how can we appreciate spring flowers

without the starkness of their absence?

the sun has crossed the sky

and is sinking into the west,

the light is soft and diffuse, 

the sky grey,

as befits the Equinox 

the day softly slips away.

by Henry H. Walker

September 22, ‘25