Henry's Poetry

hand still on the rudder

2012-01-22T05:57:00.000-08:00

buffeted in winds

anger seduces us
with its simple elegance of pure feeling,
a self-righteousness that rises up
and declares what is,
no ambiguity to parry the thrust of self outward,
our fury can convince us we’re in touch with our emotions,
whereas I contend that one emotion can blind us
to the range of self we can express,

when we lose control in sobbing, or laughing, reactions,
we stay in touch with our depths,

we parallel our early childhood
when truth didn’t shade into subtleties
or hide behind bulwarks of denial,
joy and despair the two faces each moment can wear,

maturity allows us to keep the rudder in control
to hold us forward,
despite buffeting winds that tear at us,

I, for one, need to let
my emotions blow free every once in a while
and trust that I will continue forward,
my hand still on the rudder,
despite how well I can let myself feel the buffeting
of how unfair and hurtful the world can be.

by Henry H. Walker
January 20, ’12

science & religion

2012-01-21T15:50:00.000-08:00

the right rake

our eyes pull in a chaos in front of us
and something within finds pattern within the shapes we notice,
we love the order of order,
the sense that it all does make sense,
that we can know a rightness
that not only feels good but is good,

science is a discipline
that forces us to make sure
that what we think, what we hope, what we guess,
actually survives the rake of what is provable,
the razor that cuts away the superfluous
and leaves us with the simple elegance of what is right,
a right that sometimes elders the blind hope of our guesses,
like a parent that holds us sure to a right way,

what also strikes me is what can be the rightness of faith,
a leap of belief that can find order in what can seem random,
yet still can also check its truth against what the heart reveals,
that chooses a place within upon which to stand,
to then cast out and pull back in
all the experience that can seem random,
then we can find that the heart can be as true as the head,
as long at it, too, applies the rake
that clears away anything that blocks us
from the order inherent within the best we can hope to find,

revelation can be of both science and of religion,
and can even reveal the two as making a one,
if heart & mind can work together,
with the right rake held between them.

by Henry H. Walker
January 18, ’12

not Descartes

2012-01-15T07:04:00.000-08:00

I care, therefore I am

what a gift to have a job
that not only pays the bills for the “how” of one’s life,
those bills that come due each and every month,
but also the bills that come due each moment,
for the “why” of one’s life,
and demand of me an accounting
as to what of value I’m doing with my life,
an accounting of how well the charges are doing,
each precious other who spends a time with me
in class, in project, in the finding a way forward
to where each can be the best answers
to the questions asked within the possibilities of each life,

I love to open a door,

and see it used,
and I can also love the daunting challenge of figuring what to do
when the way forward is blocked:
the need to take a deep breath,
consider the walls between us and the way forward,
and then I have to hold the student
in as much light as I can envision
to find the track through a dark wood
that can seem trackless,

beyond our powers to imagine us moving forward,

I know with the tears, that readily push into my eyes,
how much my heart drives me,
my intellect a partner, but more tool than driver,

I care, and therefore, that is how and what I am.

by Henry H. Walker
January 13, 2012

status report

2012-01-12T03:55:00.000-08:00

age is moving on

my age is moving on:
in a month I’ll be at the age the Beatles chose
to wonder about with “will you still?”s,
my ears still mostly plugged
against the siren-call of retirement,
the joy of doing with my being still feels right,
somewhat as a way to balance
the cost to the Earth of my life,

this weekend has been of saying “no” in what I eat,
of getting to chore after chore, inside & outside, & for school,
so that space and direction that just need doing
find the order they need,

our big middle school play opens
in a little more than a month,
and a lot needs doing that I can help get going:
logistics, direction as to what and how,
the finding of paths amidst the helter-skelter of other paths,
other commitments, or that of avoidance,
or sickness, or self-doubt that are strewn seemingly everywhere,
and maze the way forward,

I see the potential of the whole to come together
and of each individual to find the way forward,
so that the Light within finds the way out,
and each is as bright as can be, and acknowledged as such,
and that each piece of a possible whole clicks into place,
and all touched by that wholeness are better
for how well the light then shines.

by Henry H. Walker
January 10, ’12

a mind, and to use it

2012-01-02T04:04:00.001-08:00

spoiled and spoiling

parent to child,
amazing in the time and care invested each moment
in support of every step forward,
in every climb upward,
and what impresses me even more
is how the parent, when it’s time,
can let go of control,
though never of fear and hope,
and the child can skin a knee, or not,
and wend his or her way into independence,

as a species, I fear when we don’t grow up that way,
when we don’t appreciate free choice, and its consequences,
and we then act as if we are but entitled children
with God expected to pick up all our messes,

rather, I think we often skin our knees
and we are best as God’s children when we learn
and grow up enough to be worth the love
that brought us this far
and that hopes that we are not so spoiled
as to spoil our own future,
God gave us free will and also a mind:
should we not use it?

by Henry H. Walker
December 31, ’11

the sad joy of memory

2012-01-01T07:46:00.000-08:00

I cry hot tears

our emotions are magma
fitfully churning underneath the crust
that we vainly hope is all of who we are,
all in control, and steady as she goes,

I am blessed with being a hot spot
where the heat doesn’t just slowly rise
and shape the above from deep beneath,
rather, it forces its way out, shows itself,
and I know what drives me,
at least enough to see it and guess at a name,

as my grandchildren leave to go home,
as my children and spouses leave to go home,
I cry hot tears,

I sit here in the evening,
and my gaze is drawn to artifacts and pictures from the Smokies,
the tools I’ve found and gathered still hold the shape

of the work and vision they partnered in the shaping,
like the tools, the mountains are built well-enough
to hold and remember

so that I can reach to truly remember and imagine,
and I feel the sad joy with which memory honors what once was,

I surround myself with talismans that ache to embody
what has been wrought and thus help me envision
what can be wrought, what should be wrought,

book after book fill my shelves
and use words and the authors’ sense
to open a window as well as the tools do
and as well as the emotions do
which will not let me rest in the illusion of constancy,

last night I drifted off to sleep
and my subconscious burst forth
with horrible dreams of loss after loss
of all that I love in a trial and vanishing
as verdict after verdict rules it is time for dissolution,

today, the day after, is of leaving,

and it’s also of laundry and putting the house back together,
I miss the fullness that filled the house,
and I also like the time alone now
so that my thoughts and feelings can separate themselves
in the order and quiet
from the crescendoes that have been so full the last few days.

by Henry H. Walker
December 30, ’11

becoming as coalescing

2011-12-30T08:27:00.000-08:00

a coalescing

who we are, albeit in part,
is a coalescing of experience into a whole
of which we are formative, at least partially:
family, school, friends help make us who we are:
choices and possibilities narrow,
that which strives to be bound together,
through the consciousness of decision and self-awareness,
almost makes itself once a path is chosen,

becoming who one is is like writing a poem,
so much there already that further coalesces
as the better decision after decision is made.

by Henry H. Walker
December 26/8, ’11

creating a world

2011-12-30T08:26:00.000-08:00

our grandchildren build

the sun colors the tree-trunked horizon
and slips up & up as I meditate in cold clear air,
before me, at the base of our maple tree,
a little village goes about its business,

the maple’s dropped twigs and branches first made into structures,
little brightly-clad figures added to populate the village,
a hickory nut half in a crack in the tree is an owl,
acorn caps are bowls for their parties,
ends of pine branches and broom sedge, trees,

for our grandchildren such a small world
can be conceived, created, and loved,
the creative magic in their hearts
ready to express itself in play,
in giving a smile, a drawing, a piece of self
to a parent, a grandparent, an uncle, an aunt,

we love to give them presents of time, & love, & thing,
and they love to get them,
it feels to me that they even more love to give them:
to connect, to build, to appreciate,
to create a smurf village,

and, even more, to create a world around them
as a microcosm of what they feel in their parents’ lives,

increasingly revealed to themselves and to us
are the gifts of who each is,

and who each is becoming.

by Henry H. Walker
December 28, ’11

2011-12-24T09:03:00.001-08:00

the reel of their lives

what a gift to have the course of my life
even touch the course of any animal wild enough to be wary of me,

how even more enlightening to know animals and trees
long enough, and in enough ways, for my experience
to move from isolated snapshots,
to pieces of the movie the bear and the turkey
reel with their time on the Earth,
the peregrine falcon for me is still isolated glimpses,
the black bear, though, I’ve known all my life:
raiding our garbage cans,
appropriating my food on the AT,
and bluff-charging me as I sought what he took,
bears have walked and wandered the same woods, at the same time, as I,
I’ve watched adult and cub find food high in cherry and oak trees,

I’ve watched them snuffle through fallen leaves
and root out yellowjacket nests,

I’ve watched an adult munch on solomon seal leaves
and a cub munch on jewel-weed,

I’ve watched them in the same valley long enough
to notice evidence of culture and learning pass down the generations,
so that here bears have learned to keep about their business
despite annoying humans near them,
humans they do not run from nor view as a source to hassle for food,

the turkeys are now common enough here for me
to watch them forage, and to see the upturned leaves where they’ve fed,
I’ve watched them fly over the creek, one after another, launching with a leap,
and I’ve watched them fly into high trees to roost
or just to get away from my presence,

there is a great old poplar at the head of a deep rich hollow
who was spared the axe that felled all its brothers and sisters,

a friend who grew up in this valley,
before the Park stopped the domesticating of the land, introduced us,
and every year or so I come back for a visit,
second growth buckeyes below are huge in their own way,
and April flowers sparkle the cove as if to honor a royal,
I love to visit his cousins in other valleys
and to watch next generation poplars reach straight and high
to claim the Sun and to reclaim the land,
when a great old tree succumbs to wind, insect, disease,
I mourn it as if I’ve lost a relative
who with passing tells me a last story,

I notice and understand what I can
and record the lives that open themselves a bit to me.

by Henry Walker
December 18, ’11

2011-12-24T08:49:00.000-08:00

Winter Solstice ’11

Approaches

the Winter Solstice approaches and branches are bare,
having given-in to declining light and freezes from the north,
this year’s leaves strewn all about as if to cover the earth
and warm the sleeping roots beneath,

my gaze fixes on my sour cherry tree
and I am struck by potential in its buds
to flower and fruit in the Spring,
such potential well-wrapped and months away from release,
I savor last year’s cherry jam for breakfast
and possibility fitfully sleeps in the sap,

I keep calling up Spring’s flowers past,
when the cocoa-brown of fallen leaf and patient earth
release what then was hidden
and will again withdraw when it is time,

now it’s the moss whose burgeoning vibrant green enjoys the Sun
as recent rain swells it and the creek,

the dead hemlock are decked with bracket fungi as if for Christmas,

evergreens remind us that what was will be again,

for now truth is bare and yet full of possibility,

as demands of work and home drop off into vacation,
inside me it’s as if wound-up spring after spring,
wound tight with effort and anxiousness,
feverishly spin thoughts and feelings this way and that,
like Christmas toys run amok,
as each claims a time from me to deal
with pain & fear & loss, & all the lists
which have not yet finished with me,

we celebrate light when it is dark,
bounty when pickings are least,
and letting-go when we know how much we will soon need
to grab back hold again,
for who we are cannot sleep through Winter.

December 18, ’11

Winter Solstice & Mood

the dark holds sway,
the light hides behind land to the south,
and behind clouds many days
as grey heavily mixes with the black,

December winds the year down
and its natural mood broods,
so what do we do?
we splurge with lights & food & gifts
as if to deny the rightness of giving-in
to the darkness in any way,
so within ourselves a conflict starks itself
and we deny harshness and its time so much
our joy can shallow out instead of deepen,

the fast needs a time now to share with the feast,
the tear to be along with the laugh,
the journey in to balance the journey out.

December 21, ’11

Winter Solstice Morning

the Caribbean honors the change of season
and sends us wave after wave of warm wet air,
mistying the mountains with courses of cloud and fog,
soon after science tells us the sun stops its retreat south,
I meditate in the dark woods,
and, above me, the Big Dipper eases out of the hazy air
and points to the north star,
as if to guide the sun to return,
all around me the trunks of bare trees are black fingers
pointing up into a grey sky, black and brooding,
then blocking the stars anew,

other shapes and colors slowly return,
and we pack up and head back home,
on the way enough light and view reveal themselves to awe us
as we see bright bare trees and earth, the canvas upon which
spring, then summer, then fall
will each have their own turn to give us wonder,

now is the time for the palette to be cleansed.

by Henry Walker
December 22, ’11

beyond the stasis

2011-12-08T14:39:00.000-08:00

Of The Dance

flashes:

--a lower schooler before me, intent upon the dancers before him,

--a grandmother, all aglow with superlatives,
her grandson only one focus of her transcendent appreciation,

--the applause bursts from the middle schoolers
when surprise, virtuosity, grace, humor touches them,

--each photo I flash holds each moment I can
before gravity and the creativity arc move on,

a senior, closer and closer to the moving up and on of college,
still follows the pull of remembering and knowing her earlier self,
each step after step before still follows her
to where and who she is now,
so she speaks to middle school assembled
of her love for performing for them,
a favorite performance,
for she is in their eyes
and she treasures her memories of being those eyes
and early on deciding such a path could be hers, too,

I love each moment before me
as each dance speaks a language
that exists before words,
words that cannot even hope to the power
to translate the language of dance fully,

something happens in dance that can hold
the youngest, the oldest, and all in-between,
in the movement that life pulls from the stasis
that is first & last but that should not be all.

by Henry H. Walker
December 7, ’11

random gifts?

2011-12-04T14:50:00.000-08:00

expectations

the creek is charged
and the water charges down it,
some beech nearby still hold some of their leaves
as if to keep company awhile
with rhododendron & hemlock & holly,
which, though slowed by the cold, will make it through the winter
to capture and hold the sun in themselves,
thousands of poplar seeds are like sharp white petals
scattered among the chocolate brown
of sycamore, oak, and poplar leaves
spread over the dark and mossy earth,

fall’s exuberance of color is gone
and the extravagance
with which
Christmas answers the Solstice
is not here,
I had hoped, as I usually do, for bears to still be about,
despite the year’s last supper being over
and despite the cold which freezes what water it can in the night,

today I hike hard up Road Prong
to a waterfall by the trail which centers me,
I expect the aerobics of that exercise, and I get it,
and I expect the beauty of the water falling and receiving,

I also find gifts I did not anticipate:
tracks of raccoon and coyote in the snow on the log footbridge

and frozen in the sand above the falls,

and, when I stop to notice, evanescent art
as leaves are edged with white frost
and adjacent moss holds a frosting of snow,

yesterday, I hoped for elk and found them,
though more fully expressed in their essence
than I could have hoped-for,
yesterday, I also planned a hard hike in the same valley
to admire again old growth trees I hadn’t visited for decades,
my will then thwarted by a log footbridge
tilted and glazed with a slippery sheen of ice,
another footbridge, I find out later, washed-out
a mile up the fork of the stream,

a few hours later, I hike hard on the other side of the Smokies
to another grove of old growth wood,
and the great poplar I’ve loved to visit within it seems dead,
all its bark off in the side below me on the trail,
and there, where I hike today,
the universe gifts me with a plague of dead hemlocks,

life narrows possibilities, denies some,
and still randomly offers gifts of kindness
for which we can thank our lucky stars
if we have the openness and wit
to notice the gifts before us.

by Henry Walker
December 2, ’11

centered in Cataloochee

2011-12-04T14:45:00.000-08:00

the elk before me

midmorning, the first day of December,
deep in a remote valley of the Smokies called Cataloochee,
with no other people here save for the park ranger
I see getting into his truck,
yet I am not alone
for two bull elk browse near the ranger and me,
the rack of their antlers pointedly proud,

they notice me and then dismiss me as irrelevant
to the grass before them which begs to be eaten,

I cannot even imagine how much grass
the great bulk of their selves demands,

up the valley a ways, there are more bulls and cows,
some just there, some hard at work at eating,

last night’s mist hoar frosting the leaves around them,
each mouth of grass lightly crunchy with its frozen dew,
wild turkeys abound in the fields with them

as if both mammal and bird
are at the top of the food chain this morning,
my camera almost quivers with the joy
of the magnificence of the elk before it.

by Henry Walker
December 1, ’11

getting away

2011-12-04T14:42:00.000-08:00

I need to reboot

I need time away, to be all by myself,
even though each step away
feels like a wrenching loose,
a sticking, then a tearing,
for who I am is a part
of a wonderful marriage,

of fulfilling work as a teacher,

of friends, of neighbors, of home & garden,
all of whom I need,
and I hope that what I give
keeps up with what I get,

every once in a while, for a few days,
I need to peel away the other
and feel bare and vulnerable,
to feel alone and sad
for what I’m missing for a while,

like a computer, I sometimes need to shut down
and then reboot to be ready to respond appropriately
to all the programs within which I run myself.

December 1, ’11

postscript:
the afternoon before I leave to return home
I sit by the bountiful creek and I don’t really see it
for I am already rebooting and inserting myself fully
into the programs I run with my life.

by Henry Walker
December 3, ’11

a note just right

2011-11-28T15:49:00.001-08:00

Aunt Anna

how good it feels to sing a note just right,
for some of us we need to stand next to a person
for whom pitch is as natural as breathing,

I love to be next to Anna Holman,

for with her life she sings true to the melody
that comes from earth and family, and love,
she harmonizes with what drives growth,
with what weather and circumstance allow
for a farm, for a child, for a grandchild,
for any with whom she finds a connection,

when someone’s song comes to an end,
whether after a long or a too short life,
Anna endures and still seeks to sing with her life
and to joy in whatever songs
family and friend share with her,

everyone who lets himself, who lets herself,
come close to the love that is Anna,
becomes better for her firm soft touch upon our soul,
upon how we might sing the song God has given us,

the best in us cannot but become even better
when we let ourselves have time
and then connection with Anna,
from whom wells forth love
as if from a spring beyond our understanding.

by Henry H. Walker
November 26, ’11

off in the shallows

2011-11-28T15:47:00.000-08:00

Of Tao & Facebook

the meditations within which I focus
each and every morning
are the closest I know to the fire beneath,
the light that some of us call God,
words which have permanence of meaning
as if written in stone,
distant from the virtual realities
which draw from us
so much of our time and our words,
Facebook and cell-phones and Twitter
connect us with each other
and entice us like candy,

I wonder how much we then swim in shallows
and fill our need for depth, for profundity, with quantity.

by Henry H. Walker
November 23, ’11

Thanksgiving tables & change

2011-11-28T15:46:00.000-08:00

who’s not there

I am drawn to seasons, to mountains,
to a creek I’ve known all my life,
and the more things change,
the more, in some ways,
they remain the same,
I come around a corner
and I feel I’ve been here before,
and yet in other ways I feel the constancy of loss,
what remains the same is the episodic withdrawal
of those I love to that unknown elsewhere,

thus, the more things change,
the more the larger I does not remain the same,

the trees glory in color in the Fall
and bare themselves as if in grief, every year,
the forest erupts in hope every Spring,
and holds past and future every Summer
in the riot of lush exuberance, Summer’s present,

there’s a constancy of tables at Thanksgiving,
yet who is there changes, and I miss each loss,
how wonderful to gain those new who can sit in the chairs,
how sad to lose those I love
who no longer can joy in the sharing with us.

by Henry H. Walker
November 23, ’11

back and out of the source

2011-11-18T03:25:00.000-08:00

Closing With the Primary

primary sources draw me
like a moth to the flame:

within a working farm
the most basic to life reveals itself
as plant and animal animate the inanimate,
transforming the Sun into substance--
plants that supply our table
and the animals that add to the supply,

I feel close to the source when I’m around
where people order the richness of the land
with rows of vegetables, grains,
the earthy treasures of potato and yam,

with fruit trees who tithe back cherry & peach & apple
that others might live,
with the goat and the cow who transform leaf into milk and meat,
with the chicken from whom eggs seem to be made by scratch,

we can forget the source,
the primary reality from where and how
comes the food that allows us to be,

as long as we have food enough to live,
there is nothing more basic, more primary, truer, than love,
we need a “why” for the “what” of our existence,
and it is the other who give us meaning,
early on the parent from whom we come
and who helps us order our growth,

yet basic and primary to who we are
is the choice to bond with the other,
to connect with someone we love and who loves us,
of course, the species needs bonding for procreation,
for out of the darkness, light needs to appear,
another link in its chain thrown across the looming chasm,

yet I find marriage itself,
the commitment of one to the other,

the making of a whole,
qualitatively larger and more real than the sum of its parts,
is a primary source upon which the best of society and culture can build,

weddings should be of tears and joy
for every time one commits to the other
who we are as a species grows larger and truer
to the hope of our being,

I love a primary source for in it I close with what is most real
and upon which all else is built.

by Henry H. Walker
November 13, ’11

aaron & abby wed

2011-11-16T03:14:00.000-08:00

Aaron & Abby

when a man loves a woman,
and a woman loves a man,
a child can be born,

even when Richard Nixon is President
and Spiro Agnew, that “nattering nabob,” is Vice-President,
even after a decade of assassinations and the Vietnam War,
love and hope can echo from two beautiful children born then:
Aaron Seth Walker and Abigail Mara Lundsten,

every joy, and every bump on their road
from infant to child to teenager to adult
clear as yesterday to their parents,

how wonderful that they found each other
and how hard they have worked to build a partnership together:
the give-and-take,
the learning when to be the individual,
and when to be the couple,

and, like a fine wine, the right aging adds subtlety and depth
to the substance of their love and connections,

to Aaron & Abby, may your love and commitment to each other
grow even surer and deeper, and may you find yourselves stronger
and more full of joy because you seek to be one with the other.

with love,
from Henry & Joan Walker
November 12, 2011

blaze against the darkness

2011-10-31T09:56:00.000-07:00

community

community is a fragile, powerful living thing:

fragile in its birth
as single cells reach to be multi-cellular,
to find and sing how the tones of one’s life
can harmonize and speak with the other,
and a larger, more complex organism exists,
each reach toward the other can be tentative,
almost blind in its questing, driven though,
driven to find meaning, to make meaning, to be meaning,

my wife and I pull enough out of our introversion
to answer the call of the young
to help them learn to like themselves
and to find how to realize the power within
that craves the skills to express itself,

we also, for decades, have pulled off pigpickings
through which we invite colleague, and friend, and acquaintance,
to join us for communal food, and drink, and music, and visiting,
most we invite do not find the way to us and the pigpicking,
for a lot can come between the possible and the actual,

last night, as I enjoyed community birthing itself,
I loved the sense of creation
as the disparate become connected,
around the blazing fire,
under the defining lights within the sheltering oak,
mesmerized by the music flowing from
the musicians’ creation and performance of their own songs,
all of this blazes against how the light can die,
a circle of good folks who become even better
by connecting with the other,

tears well up in me as I appreciate the connections made,
partly through our help,

the power of any community, once created,
is a fire that holds back all the surrounding, encroaching darkness.

by Henry H. Walker
October 30, ’11

with my life

2011-10-31T03:56:00.000-07:00

more than zero sum

in the midst of my adolescent angst
my father dies, suddenly, abruptly,
no space to remember to savor the present
before the future, the absence,
crashes into my world,

I learn then that I should savor every moment
that I have the “now,” the other with me,
every beat of the heart
that is at the center of what is right,
of who I can be when I am with who is true
to the best of who we can be,

even a bone within can betray a person
and reorder where you’ll be inside, outside,
how you see yourself, be yourself,
how house and plans must then need to be reconfigured,

I know that doors close, paths forward can disappear,
even when one is young
and the future should be wide-open and bright,

I do not know how much of time and paths is left before me,

I do know that there’s a grand effort within what is
to build block upon block
to reach toward structure and meaning,

and that much within is also contrary
and works to knock the blocks awry,

with my life I seek addition rather than subtraction,
and hope that my life will have a sum somewhere above zero.

by Henry H. Walker
October 22, ’11

a double challenge

2011-10-12T04:26:00.000-07:00

the way in, and the way out

every middle schooler has a double challenge:

first, to be unique and to appreciate all that makes one special,

and second to be connected to others
and to appreciate the sameness at the heart of all of us,

what gives us shape can make us uncomfortable,
the skin that surrounds us,
the essence that is within us,
can feel like the first draft of a work,
as we feel each flaw as a mistake
that draws the myopic eye,
whereas there’s that of creation in that draft
and we should honor how far it goes toward what can be true,
that first step out from possibility into the actual
is always worthy of awe,

who we are at our heart does not want to stay alone,
and every step we make that is of a true connection
pulls us toward the other to make a whole
larger than the sum of the parts,

the young work their souls hard in this daunting challenge,
all of us should honor the way in to ourselves
and the way out to others
with the substance of our lives.

by Henry H. Walker
October 8, ’11

coalescing

2011-10-12T04:25:00.000-07:00

if handle, then poem

“Let me get a handle. . .”

Once I get a handle
I can pull the poem out of the jumbled accumulations
that my psyche has built up of the world and me in it,
a handle that coalesces into a collection
that can cohere, and sometimes be a poem.

by Henry H. Walker
October 8, ’11

bears, bears, bears

2011-10-12T04:24:00.000-07:00

a tonic for us

in the valley of LeConte Creek
bears continue to be bears
despite roads & trails & houses,
despite the bear jams of cars
with gawking cameras out windows and sunroofs,
despite those of us on foot,
despite all the mouths that drop
and from which the finest of human nature
does not always express itself,

today we see four bears who climb after grapes and acorns

and amble along through the woods hunting for what to gather
to turn into fat through which to get to spring,

they notice us when we’re too abrupt in noise or action,
mostly they filter us out as if we’re annoying younger siblings,

we, at our best, seek to understand the bear
and to marvel at its world,
they, at their best, seek to know nothing about us,
for we can be as poison to them
while they can be as tonic for us.

by Henry H. Walker
October 7, ’11

a social curriculum at six years old

2011-10-04T14:25:00.000-07:00

resisting meanness of spirit

“Ewwh! what is that thing?” as she looks at the hardboiled egg,
“I can’t look at that,” says another,

“Would you like it if I said ‘Ewwh that stuff in your lunch is disgusting?'
How would you feel?”

They say they wouldn’t like it,
Still a boy keeps holding his nose and saying “That’s disgusting!”

“If you keep saying that, I’m going to tell the teacher.”

And so he stopped.

Our six year-old granddaughter finishes her lunch
and that night asks for another egg with the next day’s lunch.
The next day she sits with other, better friends,
enjoys the egg, and the company. . .

How wonderful for her, and for the bullying peers
that meanness of spirit finds no reward.

Would that all young people would stand up for self
and that all who would give into lesser instincts
would learn how to deny the voice
that makes them smaller while giving the illusion of the larger.

by Henry H. Walker
October 1, ’11

the way up

2011-10-04T14:24:00.000-07:00

up the winding staircase

the growth up for a child
is not just incremental steps up a straight staircase,
each step upward small and equal,
each gain discrete and quantitative,
rather, landings appear after some number of steps,
places from which the view changes
and from which stairways differ somewhat on the way up,
a qualitative change, from time to time,
as the stairway spirals around again and again,

our six year-old granddaughter has just reached a new stage,
a new vantage point,
and she seems even more solid and grounded in who she is,
when her parents describe her I hear a new deference in them
to her sureness of self,
an increased awareness that what she chooses is right for her,
there’s an interest in how she will go when given a fork
and less need to guide the choice,

her three year-old sister is at an earlier landing,
just as impressive in where she is and how far she can go
yet earlier in that lifelong process of climbing into self and sureness,
her imagination whirls her off into elaborate play,
her head makes sense of counting and people,
her heart chooses joy and others more and more often,

the students I teach are in middle school
and the landings are higher
and increasingly beset by buffeting winds,

I hope all of us, wherever we are on the stairways,
remember the six year old within us
who learns every day that the going can get tough
and how to accept the frustration
and how to accept and reveal the burgeoning self
who will find a way if a way can be found,

I watch the six year-old untangle plastic lines and metal balls in a science toy,
she moves through near tears and finds the way to make it work again.
Later she tells me how after a challenge her brain feels better.

by Henry H. Walker
September 30, ’11

electricity through the wire?

2011-09-13T03:49:00.001-07:00

music as power

when I listen to music
I can feel undone
as power spells through instrument & voice,
and a perfect virtuosity
grabs all of me,
from my depths to my surface,

I wonder at the performer
through which glory flows,
I wonder how much each feels the power
and how much possession of such a gift
just feels right, natural,
the gift given that burns me
might just be natural to the giver
and the singer might be unchanged,
like a wire through which electricity has raced,

when I express what is true and natural
to me in words guided by the heart
it can affect others more than I hope to have given,
while what I do doesn’t seem that hard to me,
I can be shaken when I realize
that what flowed through me
had power beyond any gift
for which I can find a way to take credit.

by Henry H. Walker
September 8, ’11

may they be unbroken

2011-09-10T02:10:00.000-07:00

circles can break

what am I about?
when I drop down below all my pretense,
all my busy work of doing all I do,
all the stuff & fluff with which I distract myself,
I touch the chasm into which I can drop into sorrow,
the chasm out of which the power can quake me,
as I live for moments in the truth of aweing reality,

we can trick ourselves that all is tranquil,
yet we play with fire, we work with fire, we can be the fire,
I follow the fires I can barely though truly touch,
and which draw me as a moth to a flame,

what I want to do, what I want to do most surely,
is help every circle the fire can weave to be unbroken:
every student I teach,
every person I can realize I love,
every thing I can do with my gifts
of words, insight, pictures, work,
every connection, whether in family, friend,
or the larger & larger culture,

with my life I labor to make the circles be unbroken.

by Henry H. Walker
September 7, ’11

to hear the calling, to see the self

2011-09-02T03:52:00.000-07:00

A calling, but in the abstract

how wonderful and scary it is to feel a calling,
for a “calling” gives direction and purpose, meaning,
and it also gives a charge to which to rise,
a daunting challenge which requires much,
and self-doubt easily rules us,

at my best, I can only begin to see the fullness of who a student is,
let alone the fullness of who a student can be,

as I ready myself for a teaching year,
I feel a step removed from the charge,
for each student is not yet again flesh-and-blood to me,

I plan in the abstract,
those true worlds more of the intellect than of the heart,

once a student is real and before me,
my plans both ground themselves in the person before me
and in what, to me, seems that of God behind their eyes,

I await the revelation, the energizing power
that the concrete gives to the abstract.

by Henry H. Walker
August 27, ’11

into the eyes before me

I look into the eyes of our middle school students
the first day of our school year
and I imagine the self--
anxious, hopeful,
feeling alone yet ready for a friend,
feeling unique and ready for individuality to be prized,

each tentative about the risk of a leap forward,
for a stumble can open up the chance of a fall,

so much of the best of who we are
needs the nurture of love from self and community
to reveal itself and become all it can be,

at its best a school is a garden
within which the stasis of the seed
opens up into growth that feels
of miracles coming forth into the light.

by Henry H. Walker
August 30, ’11

the throttle & the brake

as I sit here among 150 middle school students,

I feel my feelings bubble up into my eyes,
more power than I can easily handle,

in some ways it’s how the students around me are:
empowered with great forces
yet daunted by how difficult the skills
to handle such power well,

how tricky it is when the pedal puts itself to the floor
and you still have to steer,
I understand why so many of us
learn to put on the brakes so often, so fully,
for it’s scary when feelings, hopes, fears,
possibilities well up within,

with adults I fear for how many ride the brake too much
while the pedal is still to the floor,

with middle schoolers the ride can be amazing
as each careens forward with the power within,
and each can get to brilliance,
as long as dead ends don’t stop the movement forward long.

by Henry H. Walker
September 1, ’11

venturing forth

when I take a picture of a young person
I wait to snap it till the extraordinary person within
takes the risk to glance out,
and the face animates with the soul,

in teaching it’s that same venturing forth that I hope for
in comment, in writing, in art, in dance, onstage,
and we are all carried along in the quest for rightness,

imagine how hard such risks are for all of us,
how unsure the paths and our own navigator,
imagine further to be on the spectrum we label autism
where it’s so easy to feel as stranger in a strange land,

I connected again today with such a student
and the power of his will and heart undid me
as he sought me out to connect for a bit,
in my belief in him and in his belief in us
his path forward might be a little easier,

and thus it should be for all students,
that each believes in self and feels the support
of teacher after teacher who can walk alongside for awhile.

by Henry H. Walker
September 2, ’11

ready to bubble up

2011-08-16T03:09:00.001-07:00

summer leaves me vulnerable

summer leaves me vulnerable,
I feel guilty that I haven’t been working,
guilty that I’m still around
when my parents and brother, and so many others,
have passed away,
their absence makes my presence seem wrong,
undeserved, a debt that can soon come due,

I find it easy to discover something in my body not exactly right,
and it becomes scary, like a bill collector too long not paid,

this week I’ve noticed brief golden flashes at the periphery of my left eye,
I dismiss it, then I obsess about it,
so I decide on an eye-doctor visit next week when I’m to be back in town,
and suddenly get the word it might be bad
and to get me to an eye-doctor today, while still here in Tennessee,
so I do,
and the problem is on the hopeful side of possibility,
I’m relieved that I can go home and just be aware,
I sigh away my fears
and bring back in my emergency bag I had in the car
in case I had to go to the hospital,
and, right as rain, the next day I find something else to worry about,

I’m relaxed enough to feel strongly
and to realize all my feelings ready to bubble up:
I cry easily,
I laugh easily,
and life as loss and endings shakes me with its truth.

by Henry H. Walker,
August 13, ’11

cardinal flower as?

2011-08-16T02:58:00.001-07:00

school impinges?

usually by now, late in the summer,
school starts to horn in to my thoughts and lists,
visions of classes and kids will dance in my head,
and I find myself not fully present in present and past,
and the future plans my present, more and more fully,

I found the first blooming cardinal flower today,
the bittersweet tolling of a bell to tell me it’s time to go,
I felt myself lost in the perfection of its beauty,
more than with it as the usual slap
to wake me up from the dream of summer,

I will be fully present for my kids and colleagues soon,
for now the mountains call and I still sit at their feet and listen.

by Henry H. Walker,
August 9, ’11

The Wayland Inn

2011-08-11T17:39:00.000-07:00

I work to remember

we write upon the surface of the earth
with hope translated into actions:
we clear, we build, we order the green,

and the earth forgets us as soon as it can,

today I searched out and explored the Wayland Inn, in Boyd’s Creek,

near Sevierville, TN, close to the French Broad River,
and home to Native Americans and the earliest of settlers,
built 50 years after the Declaration of Independence,
home of my great-grandmother
and where she returned to give birth to my grandmother,

much of the roof and lumber still good enough to hold,
but every window is smashed and glass is strewn upon every floor,

an old enamel tub remains downstairs, on its side, disconsolate,

great holes where windows opened the view still pull the eye out,

just inside the doorway, where there is no door,

the steps of the grand stairway still remember
the care and vision that went into them,
the entrance into the main road, designed to entice travelers
off their horses, out of their wagons,
and to stay awhile, is still open and inviting,
the slats below the railing and most of the embellishments on the stairway,
gone,
what passes for barbarians here have sacked the place,
mud daubers and paper wasps call it home now,

great vines of poison oak assault the front porch
where proprietors and guests must have sat
to watch the passings and anticipate whoever would come,

a quarter century ago I visited here
and the grounds were clear,
the springhouse still standing,
the inn itself a home for a man who welcomed us,

now the springhouse has rotted and been removed,
the inn itself is close to ruin,
and nobody keeps the grounds from a riot of weed,

I work to imagine it all occupied and vibrant,
my great-grandmother, a kid growing up here,
and then a young woman becoming a mother again here,

a distantly-removed grandfather, with a will of steel,
creating home and business, and even starting a Lutheran church,
so he wouldn’t have to be buried in a Baptist cemetery,

I work to find a way to a cemetery across the road,
and maybe nearby to where an academy existed just after the Civil War,
where another side of my family found itself for awhile,
now it’s overgrown woods and subdivisions of ticky-tacky:
expensive houses that the earth can easily forget in a few lifetimes.

by Henry Walker
August 8, ’11

summer is of endings

2011-08-07T04:20:00.001-07:00

goodbyes

within the moment I begin to feel
tomorrows start to shake the sureness of today,
the comfortable rightness of our children and grandchildren with us
and the whirling realities that will soon spin them away,
undo me,

after my grandchildren fly off and away
I sit by the creek where they played,
and a spirit is gone, an animation no longer here,
to give each rock, each moment, a meaning
that tells a story that pulls me into it
as if I am a child just before bed,
captivated by what I am read,
and yet there are still stories here:
remembered, imagined, distant,
as if in a rear-view mirror while I speed forward,

summer, to me, is of endings,
goodbyes follow goodbyes,
I am still in a story
in which other characters leave
one after the other,
each goodbye a loss, a sadness,
a cleansing so that I can be ready
for new chapter after chapter to begin anew.

by Henry Walker
August 6, ’11

so much us, so much not us

2011-08-07T04:10:00.001-07:00

bears

I love the black bear,
I know in my bones,
like the Cherokee knew,
that bears are our cousins,
wilder versions of us
who, in their seamless weavings
into forest, stream, and mountain,
remind us that we, too, are of the earth,
and not above it or beyond it,

I am intrigued by how much
the world reveals itself to them
in smell, sound, and intuition,
and how little through the eyes,
whereas we humans see best by seeing,

we can love the bear
for it is so much us
and so much not us,
when our paths cross
feet stop, cars stop,

and cameras race to hold the moment,
and, if a cub is involved,
we see a child,
and we know how much the mother cares,

if only we humans could care
about every child born to life,
and still realize the rightness
all the many times potential cannot
yet find a time to be.

by Henry Walker
August 6, ’11

our granddaughters

2011-08-06T04:17:00.001-07:00

older sister as translator

when my 6 year old and 3 year old granddaughters
come to mind,
I find it hard to really think,
since they come first to my heart
and I feel so strongly,
they center my world
and they ground me with the power in their selves,

each has a sureness in the knowing of what to want,
a confidence that there is a path moment to moment,
upon which each should walk,

the older can adjust more easily to thwarting pressures
for her foundation is older and surer
and also allows her access to higher levels
where the abstract of others and herself,
of other realities and her realities,
can meet and parley,

the younger, when thwarted, feels foundations threatened
as if her choice denied shakes the universe,
and she despairs over what to an adult can seem minor,
we have forgotten what it is to be three,
in her primal concreteness she cannot on her own
yet rise above and beyond the moment,

the 6 year old can remember being 3,
and she can touch the higher levels, too,
so when no one else
can console and distract her sister from despair,
she can,

she is a translator, with feet in both worlds,
who can bridge the gulf between,

at best an educator is such a translator,
what the world needs now are bridges
for truth has many parents and places
who need to find each other.

by Henry Walker
August 4, ’11

the importance of no

2011-08-03T04:09:00.000-07:00

the vitality of death to life

within us there is a powerful, wonderful impetus to have children
and to help them grow,
we are called to treasure each new attempt at perfection
by us in league with the universe,

what is also true is that we rise even higher
when we notice and value that same drive in the other:
the other person, whether human or not,
the primate, the mammal, any animal, even any plant,
who with the substance of their existence
seeks to endure and to rise into the sun,

what is much harder to get is the truth
of how many seeds are released
compared to the very few that survive to seed anew,
of how many eggs are released
compared to the very few fish that thrive,
of how many sperm and how many eggs that are potential to be
who cannot be expressed in a world without enough space to afford them,

I celebrate the impulse to parent
and the impulse to parent well,

I also celebrate the wisdom to know when to say
“no more” for me,

I teach and joy in other people’s children,

I celebrate life wherever
flowers grow,
bears wander,
and eagles soar,
and I know how many deaths each life means.

by Henry Walker
July 28, ’11

out of nothingness

2011-08-03T04:08:00.000-07:00

reaching toward order

deep, deep within reality
order permeates the very substance of creation,
all that came to be,
all that has changed,
and all that will change,

out of nothingness came all that we can come to know,

and, within it all, there is a driving impetus in the universe
toward structure, toward meaning,

some of us reach to know that impetus toward order,
and away from its lack,
and feel it to be that of God,
we like to feel something akin to us
but written much larger than we can really fathom,

others avoid such personalizing
and choose machine over person as the model,
evolution the product of randomness upon randomness
that somehow self-organizes,
for structure beats non-structure
as the fittest finds a way the less fit can’t,

consider within literature and cinema
the times when we imagine the machine to develop self-awareness,
the mechanistic becomes personal,

I choose to imbue what I see reaching toward order
to be that of God, with whom I want to be part of the best
wanting to manifest sure.

by Henry Walker
July 28, ’11

a stumble

2011-08-03T04:07:00.001-07:00

I am a camera trying to focus . . .

I come back again and again
to the allure of the moment
and to the opposing allure:
to pull out and away,
to plan, to remember,
and also to shake off the numbing of the moment
that familiarity breeds,
I want to come back again and again to the now
and to be fully present,
to “get” the moment is to know both it
and the context of time and space
within which the present manifests,

and all moves on,

the senses give us now,
the mind gives us before and after,
the heart gives us what matters, and why,

like a camera trying to focus,
I struggle to see where I should give myself,

we pay a price when we stumble with the body,
we pay a price when we stumble with the soul.

by Henry Walker
July 24, ’11

to touch glory

2011-08-02T04:13:00.000-07:00

LeConte Sunrise 7-31-11

dusk slips into night,
as if a light switch is flicked and slowly, slowly dims,
foggy wisps and sheets of grey cloud
slip over us and between us and even the nearest ridge,
and the light slowly, slowly dims,

in those earliest hours before night breaks into day
high dappled clouds drift away overhead
and haloed stars begin to open themselves up to us,
electric lights in the valley below mark out the flatness and the roads,
and I feel myself on a perch of the mountain
where I stand and walk and consider,

as the night rolls on and the day just starts to roll over it,
I look into the west where black still suffuses the grey
and only the roughest rounded shapes reveal themselves,
distance there merges ridge and sky into a blur of sameness,
I look into the east where the lightest of blue and red
slips out between streaks of cloud,

now the fog hangs low in the valley
and streams to fill the hollows
as if to forget the lowlands
and be a sea upon which we, the mountains, are islands,
and great ones at that,

rose announces the coming of the sun,
then softens into cream just before the sun crests the clouds,
and, when it does, moment after moment of grandeur
centers upon and around the sun and its rise,
a centering that holds all we can see

we poor humans cannot hold it at all,
so, when we try, only tears reach close to the power,
with pictures and words I seek to not forget this time
when veils part enough to let us touch glory.

by Henry Walker
July 31, ’11

the school of hard knocks

2011-07-19T05:39:00.001-07:00

when the going gets tough

when the trail is rough, steep, & slick,
I need attend fully to each step,

for, when I escape the moment
and fully visit memory or plans,
my feet can slip
and the present can school me with a hard knock,
to tell me, old school, to pay attention,

still, I can work to be here at my feet
and in the grok of all around me,
if I switch my focus back-and-forth
at a time and in a way that honors both,
I am even more present in the moment,
and, if I can find the right moment
and expand myself into past or future,
I am even more in the moment,
for the moment is framed
as one frame within a successful movie
I hope to produce with my life,

still, I have to watch it,
for the price I pay for slipping
gets steeper the older I get.

by Henry H. Walker
July 16, ’11

to give, to receive

2011-07-19T05:37:00.000-07:00

me the provider

part of who I need to be is the provider,

in the day I’ve been here at the cabin
I’ve felt “LeConte” coming,
our big social overnight of the year:
the hike, the camaraderie, the opening of doors
to creek and effort, to flower and effort,
to sunset and sunrise, and effort,
the good food before, during, and after,

the gentle guiding of opening of doors
so that others can see beyond and choose to walk through,

I’ve baked a country ham, pork-filled buns
with barbecue from our own barbecued pig,
blueberry muffins from our own blueberries,
I’ve boiled and snipped chicken for our salad
and put up six more pans of angel biscuits
for the celebratory meal when we’re back down,

plus a flurry of phone calls: logistics is a challenge,

I’ve already bought, processed, and frozen the traditional applesauce,

meanwhile, this afternoon I notice some new neighbors are at home
so I take a container of applesauce to one,
to welcome her to the neighborhood,
she shows me her new windows
and I ask if she wants to see bears out them,
we exchange phone numbers so we can alert the other as to bears,
an hour later I get a call,
“. . . cubs up a tree, just down the road. . .”

I spend an hour photographing two up a sycamore,
who patiently wait while mom finds the food their nursing needs,
two cubs in the same tree, half-awake, half-asleep,
they look at us, the paparazzi, who need to see them,

and they? they merely put up with seeing us,

a third cub, diminutive, went another way,

I spot him, watch him, and snap picture after picture of him
scurrying around road, bridge, people, fence, and stream,
he works hard to find a way back to family,
I snap picture after picture of him
as he crosses the creek, is thwarted by a fence,
recrosses the creek, and escapes up a hill,

the mom does not return while I have patience to wait,
dusk approaches and I have my own agenda to follow,
though my agenda has much of the provider, and thus others, woven into it,

how wonderful that I get a gift,
directly as a result of my giving for giving’s sake.

by Henry H. Walker
July 15, ’11

the mountains?

2011-07-19T05:34:00.000-07:00

Back to the Smokies

I go to the Smokies and I say
“I’m going to the mountains. . .”

this summer we’ve flown over and admired the
Wind River Mountains and the Absaroka,
we’ve explored the edges of the Tetons,
some high slopes in Yellowstone,
and the rolling plateau way up in the Beartooth,
and each was spectacular, and fresh, and glorious,

returning to the Smokies today, I feel their age:
the worn roundness and lush diverse growth,
three wild turkeys are in the yard
instead of the heron and the eagle of the Tetons,

the last 100 miles all hazy,
black thunderheads seem to grow from the highest ridges,
a storm breaks loud and long over us at the cabin
and the stream turns brown
as the higher water stirs its bed,

my nose likes the humidity,
the rest of me sweats,

when I hike high up the mountain
great masses of rose bay rhododendron bloom
to welcome the cooler air
and the holes left above them by dying hemlock,

the battery of the streams has a full charge.

by Henry H. Walker
July 16, ’11

Wyoming and Montana call us

2011-07-13T15:23:00.000-07:00

in wildness is

as we come into Jackson Hole
the great Wind River Mountains thrust up into our awareness,
at the top great walls of rock have captured and held the snow deep,
while lower down lines of melt delineate and green the valleys,
the Gros Ventre River browns and flows with us toward the Snake,
Summer is taking its time to get here
and the remnants of Winter cap the peaks white
and loudly rush brown to the sea,

the first day out here is like erasing a blackboard
of all our lists of chores, worries,
the detritus of minutiae that makes up a life well-lived,
each moment outside on a trail, or just pausing,
maybe slipping into a nap or visiting with good folks,
is a swipe across the cluttered blackboard in search of a surface
upon which newness can be written,
even if the hand and the themes have been here before,

every moment of every day deserves to be lived as a new gift,
that first moment with grandness can shake me to my core,
what I find true, and troubling, is how easy I can stop shaking
and find majesty commonplace, a background to be barely noticed,

while I clear away what’s on my board
I don’t want emptiness to be my goal,
for in my spiritual development I still love to be a spectator
in love with the world and its wonders,

my sense of wonder starts to sketch itself anew,

high mountains before me slap me with the thrust of their realness,
casually grazing elk catch my eye,

flowers and trees wake me to notice them,

an animal yelps in the early night,

a heron calls my eye and my camera early in the morning,

a muskrat busies itself in the pond
and gets annoyed when it notices us,
four white pelicans pull me up the thermal with them
as they break from fishing the river
to joy together in the air above us,

morning breaks pianissimo, subtle, soft,
birds awake and open water greets the Sun with steaming mist,

we hike toward a hanging canyon,
the cleft between great vertical walls of stone,
pewter-grey at heart, though up close lichen mottles them,
the grey in our hair matches us to them,
as does the aging of our skin,
our legs still glory in the effort of the pull

and flower after flower draws us to pause
and work to identify, to photograph,

to appreciate how well the plants here celebrate freedom
from stasis snow that still holds the highest ground,
snow which has only released its grip on the lower slopes within the last few weeks,

the crystalline perfection of an ice-crystal
yields to the evanescent perfection of bloom after bloom after bloom,

on our way up snow blocks the trail enough
that we don’t get to the rim of the canyon
to appreciate and capture the cascades of water released toward the valley,
on our way down we spot a brown bear below us,
out and foraging at the noon hour
while moose and elk have better things to do elsewhere,
a fellow hiker argues that summer is so short here
that bears would be fools not to go out in the noon day sun,

the Tetons contrast: flat valley with abrupt mountains,
lush green growth below caps of snow,
roads, houses, and technology within a world
where elk, moose, and grizzly still find their way,

tomorrow we leave to go north and east,
where the human footprint allows us paths,
yet where the other feels freer,

as the day winds down into dusk I spot an eagle,
perched at the top of a spruce, a sharp eye on the small clear stream below,

he swoops down, back up into a shorter tree for awhile,
and then he’s off down the valley, back to his nest, maybe,
above the river so brown it must make hunting hard,
the next early morning a lone elk pulls me from my meditation,
grazes and meanders awhile, then slips into woods
away from me and my camera, just as the bear did yesterday,

the drive up toward Montana is long miles
of straight pointed trees, abrupt mountains, and meadowed plains,
we stop and watch a herd of bison cross the road
and I love watching them lumber vault a fence,
the herd decides to go
yet each individual pauses,
reconsiders,
and then determinedly half-falls across the fence,

we leave mountains with rocks patiently formed at the bottom of oceans
and then upthrust and contorted,
to the landscape of Yellowstone built much more violently
as volcanoes exploded and spewed forth over millions of years,
to give form as a start,
after that primal creation enormous ice-sheets slowly,
inexorably flowed and sculpted,
and rearranged things, time after time,
upon such a landscape snow and rain then did their fluvial work
and forest after forest built themselves, and were forgotten,
save in living DNA and some remnant petrified trees,
here, more than anywhere else in the world,
thermal pools steam, geysers erupt, and mud pots gurgle
from the ever-present memory of the heat still beneath,

we are blessed with beauty everywhere
and we crescendo when we find roaring rainbowed falls,

and then eight mountain sheep on dusty slopes above the Yellowstone River,

downstream from the rainbow and falls,
ewes and lambs almost pose for us
amidst volcanic memory and raging river below,
as we head out of the park
a grand antlered moose stops the cars
and crosses the swollen creek,
my camera works hard to hold his integrity of self and will,
amid his stumbles in the rushing current,

a cinnamon brown bear stops us next
and heads away from the road on its own errand,

we intersect wildlife,
our paths touch at a point and only at a point,
we increase our chances with good planning,
choosing our paths in terms of probabilities,
yet luck must be with us for the lines to cross,

much reveals itself to us today
and we need sleep to let us recharge
to deal with the power,

not only do we need to clear off the cluttered blackboard,
we also need to clear away the psychic and physical fog before it,
which only enough rest, often enough, right enough, can clear,
the fog slows our reactions and obscures
what the Power writes with rock & snow, flower & river,
the wild animals whose life and ours intersect,
and we need to let them and us write true,

the next morning on our way up to 11,000 feet,
another brown bear stops our car
as he pushes through brush and back away into the woods,

great fields of snow cover the high land
as snow-melt cascades and falls,

the white churning froth seems to remember
the white solidity of the snow from which it has been released,

where the land has only recently been revealed again,

we surprise ourselves with a profusion of flowers
as if jewels were scattered across the ground:
sub-alpine and alpine adventurers who thrive
where the challenges are great and the season short:
sky-pilot, shooting star,

forget-me-nots,
bluebells, dwarf clover, drava, even Siberian Smelowskis,

we both feel as if creation is new here, like that first morning,
and tears of wonder well up within us,
it is hard to feel other than daunted
by the magnificence inherent in whatever drives the universe toward order,
every flower, every view, every expression of water released, or held,
starts to shake us, and we awaken enough to notice,
we find the right naps in the afternoon so that we might ready ourselves
to be clear for the next writing,
we are here in these particular wild mountains, northeast Yellowstone and the Beartooth,
because they are here and times before we have found ourselves in them, literally,
both physically present and psychically renewed, here,

maybe it’s going home again to a familiar morning, peak, animal,
an experience of opening the eyes and watching words and pictures sketch themselves,

various notions of what can be get into my head
and I want to find where the world can match them,
I take a picture and what is before me inside
is never all there in the rectangle I snapped,
it doesn’t quite hold the hope I felt,
so I look again and again for the right circumstances
so that what my inner eye dreams matches what my shuttered eye sees,

reflections intrigue me and I have taken picture after picture
of water below with what is above also in the shot,
this morning I try again,

I find snowy mountain and bright-lit spruce reflected near true in a still lake,
though like many of us its calm surface is a front,
the lake’s surface does not express
the thousands of spawning cutthroat trout within it,

we sit by the lake an hour in hopes
the otter will join us as they did two years ago,

with animals you just have to hope and be ready,
so I store up a multitude of wanted visions,

and a readiness to conjure up another
if the completely unexpected reveals itself,
as the eagle did early and late in our trip,

the otter are not here
so I ready myself to visit a petrified stump which is always there,
and the trick is my getting to it
which seems a lesser problem
than the animals’ clock and plans matching mine,
yet a herd of bison, with racing calves and frisky mothers,
block the trail and don’t move,
so we move on in deference to them,

we find a place across the steep canyon
from where we saw the mountain sheep two days ago,

we see them again, and their neighborhood from a reverse angle,
I fear I’ll fall myself just imagining the steep dry slopes they frequent,
a coyote stops us for awhile,

then bison calves and mothers walk along by the road as if to pose,

then, up on the hill, something. . .
ears erect, looking down at us. . .
a WOLF!

we stop, snap a few quick pictures, drive ahead and then back,
the wolf parallels the road, as if testing for gaps,
and then loses herself in the grey-green sage
away from the open yellow-green grasses that feed the prey that keep her going,

we have never seen a wolf so close,
despite hours and hours of patient waiting in the early dawn,
closing in toward noon we luck upon this yearling female,
one who reportedly likes taking a turn shepherding the pups,
and is known to use the wooden bridge to get across the creek below,
I see her eyes as she looks down on us
and our worlds intersect,
though she is far more important in my world than I am in hers,
I am like the ubiquitous mosquito for us humans,
an annoyance to be avoided, maybe endured,
we drive back and forth, hoping for another glimpse of the wolf
and we can’t find her again,
only after we completely lose the wolf
do I let myself realize the precious gift of her visit,
and my tears then flow freely,
I’m almost in shock that the commonness I feel
was touched by the nobility I feel in her,
wolves and humans share a bond,
despite the grim stories
our childhood fears rumor falsely,
in a wildness that includes the wolf
we can know a part of ourselves we lose at our own peril,

on our way out of the park
a mother moose and her calf sleep away
the heat of midday in shade near the road,
we get back to the motel and follow her example,

our last full day in these mountains
we rise early to drive to the wolf’s neighborhood
and climb a flowered slope
above the confluence of Soda Butte Creek and the Lamar River,

eight years ago here the royals, called wolves,
expressed enough of themselves to leave us speechless:
the howl, the connection of one to the other,
pups and parents, a stick in the mouth of the alpha female,
to use play to entice pups to swim a stream,
the alpha male starting off to hunt,
and expecting black pups to follow,
and, when they veer away, he gently retrieves them,
I’ve seen early school teachers do the same,

no wolves appear this morning,

however, the lupophile experts we join
show us a grizzly in their spotting scope, a magnificent animal,
far enough away for only awe and not fear to be in me,

after awhile we watch her chase after a group of bison,
in hopes that a calf might be forgotten in their run away,
it isn’t and the bison stop and elder the grizzly away
with their massive shouldered will,

these bison’s cousins are no longer on the trail
so we hike hard and breathless straight up a high ridge, low in the valley,
where the accidents of forest, volcanic enthusiasm,
tens of millions of years of percolating, metamorphosing ground water,
and then erosion upon uplift,
have left revealed stump after stump of petrified tree,
still remembering the thrust upward toward the Sun in how they lie,
some logs and stumps endure with rings
that still show their growth of 50,000 millennia ago,

our aging bodies work and handle well the pull,
though we feel it keenly in our muscles and our lungs,
the caution of the elder makes us careful of the fall
inherent in the steepest slopes,
so we walk beside the trail for better footing
and slide down sections on hands and butts,

we snap picture after picture of the memory held in the stump
and the moment around it, ephemeral flower and enduring mountain,
and of us, senior in our species life-span and so junior to the truths
that manifest here now and will manifest
if and when our species fades away,
at least those trees long ago chanced into a way
to write a bit of their story in stone,
I work with pen and paper
and with the ripples I hope my life can send out,

the next day finds us in the Bighorn Valley
ringed by mountains with streams fed from their snow,
we drive miles and miles across sage-mottled dry land,
populated mostly by the occasional cow and small oil pump,

here on a dry ridge
the desert has varnished flat sandstone surfaces a deep mahogany brown,
and earlier peoples have expressed themselves on that stone
by cutting away the rusty surface until shapes appear, and endure,
the oldest maybe 11,000 years old,
most are anthropomorphic, human-like in general shape,
with headdresses, often antler-like in general shape,
curved in toward the other,
exaggerated fingers on the hands, a few animals,
particularly a cartoon-like, large-eared rabbit,

the animals supposed to be older than the humanoids,

the native peoples of the Southwest
left images of snakes, spirals, shamans, and deer,
these people in this place expressed themselves differently
in the “what” and the “why” of their rock art,
like the petrified stump, they found a way
to use stone to remember some of who they were,

this time visiting this site, I work to see and consider each figure,
I also work to see its overall shape and to place it in space,
the ridge is shaped like the curve of a bow,
roughly paralleled by the bowed round hills opposite it,
a creek flows between the bows and makes the serpent shape
I do not find on the rock,
at the center of the curve of the rocky ridge
a clear petroglyph of three humanoid figures, one within another,
draws my eye, as it did the first time I came here,

as evidenced by the photo I took of it still on my home wall,
its power is worthy of notice,

high up on the northeast rim of the Bighorn Valley
we have visited and wondered at Medicine Wheel,
a circle of loose rocks arranged to the cardinal points,
above a view of the world that takes the breath away,
this high site still has power,
particularly the side pointing to the rising Sun,
which native peoples regularly decorate as they visit even now,

at Legend Rock the open side of the curved ridges
faces east toward the rising Sun,
not a casual coincidence I would guess,
and to the exact northeast of the opening,
lies Medicine Wheel, as if each site were connected,
another coincidence?

the rock art at Legend Rock has endured,
closer to complete, than the Medicine Wheel,
I think about the sand sculptures of Buddhists and the Navajo,
which in their transience still express the eternal,
and maybe better express the eternal than the rigidity of permanence,

the riches of this continent allow us bounty
and the freedom to create anew,
not only those who made this country
but the first peoples who found this continent
opened a scary gift:
deciding for one’s self what of the new to create,
what of the old to hold true,
native peoples thrived on this continent 10 millennia,
our country’s arrogance and narcissism
bodes poorly for how long we as an American people can endure,

out here in the high West everything seems writ large,
and I feel as a child just learning to read,
so the books have large letters
and the illustrations are simply breath-taking,
if I keep working on my reading
I can find stories and truths more and more subtle,
provocative, disturbing, rewarding,

only when we clear away the clutter on the board
can we find the way to write what needs to be written,

back in Jackson Hole we have come full circle,
though I feel we’ve spiraled deeper,
I read over my chronicling and musing,
and I treasure it and the pictures within my camera,
no one can fully appreciate such moments as grace has allowed us,
we’ve done our best and that is good enough,

before we leave 42 elk come out of the woods
and graze around house and stream,

mostly cows and calves, calves still new to the world,

the bald eagle returns, perches, poses, and swoops away,
my camera and heart ache to hold it,
and it is gone,

tomorrow we return to the East,

may the wonder of wildness stay in our hearts and guide our steps
and guide what we write upon the board of our lives.

by Henry H. Walker,
July 1-10, ’11

off to Wyoming!

2011-07-13T13:24:00.000-07:00

Out of the Can

there’s a lot of the herd animal in us:
to get to Wyoming and the its wide-open spaces
we become sheep at the airport,
blindly following every whoever who tell us what to do,
adjusting each action to fit the other
so many lines and so much walking by each other
with averted eye and yet noticing all,
the social glue of cell-phones everywhere,

people have to talk, to face the other,
put most of us in wilding nature
and soon we circle and face each other,
it’s much harder to face out into all that is not us,
at least not us in the familiar sense of easy mirror,

dusk has fallen on the Tetons
and I sit outside alone but for the stars,
and even among them I see the space station brilliantly pass by,
a dim satellite heads north,

I think of Walt Whitman leaving a lecturing astronomer
to stand outside so that the stars themselves spoke without translator,

a truth I love in Quakerism is that we should get as close as we can
to the Source, for a primary source can help us close into rightness.

by Henry H. Walker
June 30, ’11

fully present?

2011-06-27T15:22:00.000-07:00

so many slippers

at what age
do we as individuals,
did we as a species,
lose being fully present in the moment?

I sit here,
remembering the highlights of the day, the week,
and anticipating tomorrow: where, how, and who I’ll be,
down the stream two elementary age children
seem lost in a “now” of rocks, water, and each other,

I look at rock and water
and I see mother bear and cub earlier in the day

whom we were lucky enough to see
in a thicket of blackberries and a field next to it,
I see the kids with me then joy in those moments,
amid flowers and field and soft green mountains,
I look again and see myself at a funeral tomorrow,
clicking into connections and feeling the tear
of the loss of a great woman, my aunt,

what a gift we have
to have so many within us,
what a price we pay
for having so many slippers that fit.

by Henry Walker
June 23, ’11

the loss as raw

2011-06-27T15:18:00.000-07:00

grace allows us to have

my mind bewares some empathic leaps,
I start to imagine the loss of a child
and I bounce off,
like a finger that has quickly touched a too-hot griddle,

even when a person has lived a full life
and has found the way to let herself go
without any fear we can see,
it’s still hard to know I won’t hear her call my name again,
or laugh, question, tell a story,
or pull me aside for a confidence,

I get the quick terse message that she died in the morning,
and I fuss that I didn’t get any word before then of a quicker slipping,
I don’t have formal clothes with me for the funeral,
a problem I could solve, and did,
more importantly, I found I could see my aunt clearly
and words came to me quickly
that would place her in context as a light,
like the high summer Sun and even surer
the light that was that of God that was within her,
and that Light which she had to let out to blaze brightly,

as I stride to the pulpit to share my words of her and the Light,
I pause and touch the rich brown wood of her casket,
I read and speak to her family and to the body before me,
as I head back to my seat I touch her casket again,

after the Service and at the cemetery, then at the meal,
it’s time to touch each other who also loved her,
with words to console, to remember, to reconnect,
for we still on the earth have time for each other,
to appreciate each other for how well the other loved this great woman,
with touch: the hand, the hug, the kiss on the cheek,

the food is good, the companionship special,

and still I know that each of us will come round a corner sometime before us,
and we will feel her loss as raw,
so that it will seem as if it has just happened,

our feelings make us more than our bodies
but our bodies are the only vehicle
that allows us to live in whatever moments grace allows us to have.

by Henry Walker
June 24, ’11

a season change

2011-06-26T16:22:00.000-07:00

Solstice ’11

Spring has one more day
before the years starts to die,
the Sun will start to slowly lower in the sky,
the day begin to shorten,
though it will be hard to notice,
what with all the feasts going on,

each leaf making its hay,
each insect eating its leaf and each other,
each flower & bird & bee using sex to further life,
flower to seed, to fruit, to nut,

bird to egg to fledgling,
and the black snake in our yard
waits for a bluebird baby breakfast,

the rainwashed air is clear
and the late afternoon Sun butter knifes through the woods
with a warm soft dapple to its revelations,

I’ve found a yellowjacket nest at the house I’l have to kill,
for these ferocious hunters brook no disturbance,

I get my camera and mark the rhododendron blossoms
who remind me that everything that lives has a jewel within it,
despite how easy it is to forget that truth,

the last full day of Spring wakes with a dark feel,
leaden clouds overheard and storms nearby,
while stars of rhododendron blossoms decorate the forest floor
as if to humor the changing season,

a lone wild turkey said “hello” to me yesterday,

and I hope for a visit from him or a bear today,
I’ve had to leave my camera out in the mid air for it to acclimate,
yesterday the lens fogged-up when I brought it out of the air-conditioning
and I couldn’t see the turkey through the obscuring foggy lens,
everything is watered and just waits for the drying Sun,

a cool breeze accompanies the fresh creek as the early day slowly lightens,
close to the stream the green of the rhododendron is shadowed dark,
while the leaves closer to the sky pale toward yellow in their shading,

all the leaves seem still as if in meditation,
preparing themselves for the longest day for catching and holding the light,

the hemlock are only shadows of themselves
and in their insect-plagued passing remind me
that inherent in the most optimistic of days
death still whispers its truth,

as breakfast is pulling itself together
I go to the stream with four creek-ready kids
who race back and forth to the house
and delight in exploring, wading, and throwing rocks into the racing water
sometimes at sticks they consider boats that need bombarding,
spontaneous projects pull them together
as each delights in what can be built by building upon the other’s enthusiasm,

something about the longest day pulls us high atop a grassy bald
with mountains arranged in numbing splendor around us,
the deep blue of the sky slowly forgets itself,
the Sun broils us and the grasses laugh back with flower and seed,

the young with us feel the openness and run,

on the way down we slip ito the trees
and a wet cool glade of ferns welcomes us,

back at the cabin the creek pulls us back to it,

the bear must be high now
for I’ve seen no sign of them deep in this valley,

the day dissolves into the dark
and thunder, wind, and rain welcome the changed season,

tonight the leaves no longer meditate but rather shake with the power.

by Henry Walker
June 21, ’11

into vacation

2011-06-26T16:20:00.000-07:00

into the mountains

I drive from the night into the day,
high clouds hug an intermittent Moon
until I pull out of the long piedmont
and rain begins to dog me the last hundred miles,
the downpour starts as drizzle
and lightning shouts at me, narrow pillars from cloud to ground,
within a second or two five appears before me early on,
when the rain downpours enough to turn the streams around me brown
the light flickers as if a switch is being quickly turned on & off,
my plans change and change again,
as dirt roads in search of elk lose appeal,
the rain pauses and reveals views of high ridges and strata of clouds,
I almost choose the high mountain road in hopes of flowers and shifting views,
the fear of obscuring fog tilts me away,

I stop by the grocery and stock up,
get to the cabin, unload, and briefly notice house, yard, and stream,
the rosebay rhododendron shakes me enough so that I notice it,

the storm returns, I nap, the creek starts to mildly roar,
I cook for my guests coming in tomorrow,
and then I take the time to go down by the fulling creek,
without thinking I just whoop, and a chill shivers my spine.

by Henry Walker
June 19, ’11

2011-06-26T16:13:00.001-07:00

Aunt Naome

how appropriate that on the last day of Spring,
just as 1 of the 3 longest days of the year begins,
she, who was light itself, left us,
and returned to the Light which passeth all understanding,

to be in Naome’s presence
was to be around brightness of spirit,
openness of heart,
devotion to family,
a child of God who knew
the preciousness of His gift of our lives,
and of his Son,

all who knew her grew larger
in how she challenged us to be real
and to appreciate that in our differences
we can still be one, and a richer one for it,

I remember her well:
her smile, her touch, her love,
the stories she told me of my father
and the welcoming she felt by Mother and family,
the wonderfulness of her children,
the way the song of her life echoes in so many of us,

Aunt Naome,
let us work to keep you alive by remembering you well.

by Henry Walker
June 20, ’11

as vacation approaches

2011-06-18T12:25:00.000-07:00

I need a tune-up

as vacation approaches
there’s both a flurry of finishing-up what I’m bound to do
and an increasing release from the harnesses
to which I yoke my energies,

as the doing less defines me,
anxiousness after anxiousness starts to bubble up,
as worries I’ve denied, while doing,
surface like bubbles on a pond,
and I have to deal with varying degrees of the noxious as they burst,

it is a good time to take stock
and clean out the effects of the neglect that has had to be
while I have dealt moment-to-moment,
day-to-day, with what has needed doing.

by Henry H. Walker
June 17, ’11

the tool shapes the user

2011-06-18T02:57:00.000-07:00

word

words seem to train us in ways to think,
the tool shapes the user.

by Henry H. Walker
June 12, ’11

impatience, the virtual reality

2011-06-18T02:53:00.001-07:00

us & time

“don’t plant a cedar for you’ll die before it shades you. . .”

that’s the advice from late middle age:
I no longer plant trees for my own life,
I marvel at ones I planted a quarter-century, a half-century, ago,

for near 40 years I’ve been putting monies into retirement,
time enough for compounding to work its wonders,

for those today, an interval of minutes between desire and completion,
can be unacceptable,
even a few seconds can feel thwarting,

patience may be a virtue,
impatience is the virtual reality.

by Henry H. Walker
June 18, ’11

with dice?

2011-06-18T02:05:00.000-07:00

us & God

the Greeks believed in Fate,
with our lives as thread, spun and cut by the gods,
and at the same time they believed in individual will,
our lives in our own control,
with Fate and the gods adversary to be defeated,

even these days we can leap to feeling
that each action that happens, each disaster, each success,
each thwarting or abetting of our will,
is part of a plan,
with God like a helicopter parent who takes care of us,
who rewards us, who punishes us,
we are as infants with God as hovering parent
who has ends we cannot fathom,
and means we certainly cannot fathom,
God as watchmaker is but a distant memory from an earlier time,

we need a reorientation of perspective,
we need to accept capriciousness, randomness within our world,
dice rolls that destroy and create,
and which are as basic to the universe
as the deep, fundamental yearning toward order and complexity
that also drives the universe,
like an engine that will not cut off,
a drive that pushes us toward the heights we might get to
if we align ourselves with connection,
we somehow must simultaneously adapt and assert within the possibilities,
we must hold to relationship, to love,

it is important to be, to strive, to not to yield,
and it is important also TO yield,
how vital it is to know the difference as to when,
and deal with it.

by Henry H. Walker
June 12, ’11

the power of their music

2011-06-15T04:27:00.000-07:00

At our pigpicking last Saturday night, we were lucky to book the local band, BIRDS & ARROWS. When the rain and lightning drove us inside, they played in our dining room, while I sat at their feet, enjoying and marveling.

Here's a description of them in words and in a photo:

BIRDS and ARROWS accomplish an elegant, warm sound that is truly their own. Their compelling and road tested live show appeals to a surprisingly wide range of audiences; they are the cherished rock band for folk lovers and the favorite folk group for rock fans.

closing with the source

I sit here in front of musicians
who mesmerize me with cello, drums, guitar, and voice
within songs they themselves have created,

the vocals pierce & harmonize,
each note, each phrase, each piece of melody & rhythm
speaks to each other, and thus to us,

while within it all the lyrics also work
to express the power the musicians felt in the creating
and now in the performing,

for now, for me, the words are but sound
that leads and counterpoints but not yet full forms
ready for my thought,
I’m living this moment more basic, more in feeling,
more in places that words can reach toward
but never really touch,

the power of their music shakes me,
as if to wake me up from the sleep-walking
that can so easily pass for consciousness,

at some point I will rise up to the words and their power
as they will synergize with the primal base where I am now,

for now I cannot even hold the power of sound as song,

when I hear the songs again and know the lyrics
I hope for an even richer experience, yet, just as in this poem,
while I’m in the world of words
I cannot close with the source itself.

by Henry H. Walker
June 12, ’11

life = valuing & choice

2011-06-13T02:21:00.000-07:00

Being True

I think, therefore I know that I am,
where I am, and where the other lies,

I feel, therefore I know how I feel myself to be
and where I want to go,

it is only in decision, in the valuing of alternatives
and then the choosing
that we are the selves we want our selves to be,

do we even exist when we’re still?
does not life equal change?
think a minute, consider, how does experience inform your answer?

I’ve watched toddlers given choice after choice,
except for the choice not to choose,
and I’ve wondered what that’s all about,

is choosing itself the sculptor
who takes us unformed and gives us form?
form that we create with every step we take,
we become who we must be
as our valuing forms us true,

I feel most sure
when I feel most intensely,
with the laugh, the sob, the smile, the tear,

I know who I am
when I am able to love another
and to help the other know and love themselves true,

the world is cold
and each of us has a fire within
that can hold back indecision
and let the actor in us
value, choose, and succeed in being true.

by Henry H. Walker
June 7, ’11

trust, at the heart

2011-06-12T03:05:00.000-07:00

amazing people go forth

faith, the maybe irrational belief that what one wants to be
can actually be what is before us when a new day dawns,

the start of any new journey should, logically,
shake us to our core,
for in the unknown, as the Greeks feared, might lie dragons,
yet the Greeks, and we, still choose to venture forth,

imagine the trust in one’s self, and maybe a partner,
to become a parent without knowing the path before you,
and to trust that you can find a way,

imagine the trust of a parent for a school
that we will know the paths
and find the paths that will work for their child,

imagine the trust of a teacher for the student,
our partner in finding the way forward,

and the paths are found: walked, run, danced,

and I feel humbled by how often faith is rewarded here
with amazing people going forth.

by Henry H. Walker
June 10, ’11

to be here, to notice, and the price?

2011-06-06T15:34:00.000-07:00

Death, the Foundation

how daunting it is realize how many deaths there were before me,
how many deaths there were and are because of me,
how daunting to realize how many experiments
that were ventured since life first began,
their paths not taken for long,
and still entropy yields to complexity,

how torturous has been the path of the dots
that connect blue-green algae to me,
how daunting the many plants and animals
that have died in forced service
for me to be here with this pen writing these words,

I look out, I look back, I look forward,
and it is good to be aware
and to create meaning with perception,

yet today I want to honor the first ancestors
who stepped out of the immediate
and buried someone they loved,
who offered flowers, and other tangibles, in memory and appreciation,

should not every moment we live
honor all that has had to be, and had to not be,
that we can sit here
and notice where and who we are?

by Henry H. Walker
June 4, ’11

ties that bind

2011-05-29T03:18:00.001-07:00

the circle unbroken

the circle is not broken,
rather, it is forged anew
each time we come together
with intention to connect,
with care for our own selves,
with care for the other,

our circle holds in a meeting for worship
and many speak as that within must be without,
as each speaks to ties that bind,

and, though we soon will fly asunder
with our other trajectories and other circles,

the circle that has us within nature,
connected to ourself and to others,
will not be broken
unless we forget to remember the circle,
and that it is unbroken.

by Henry H. Walker,
May 26, ’11

a personal journey

2011-05-29T03:17:00.000-07:00

to know another

how can we ever know another?
what comes in that pair of eyes?
where mind and imagination go with that perception?
what the self within makes as the disparate becomes one?
how can we ever know another?

when others share pieces of that personal journey,
I marvel at the different paths that open up
and take me down them
as I leap into the alternative universes
that exist as surely as the one within which I live,
sometimes I just smile in wonder
at the coolness of a new perspective,
and, at other times, I feel pain and the tears come easy,

when I know the truth of another,
at least the truth that seems sure
by all the objective criteria I know,
the person herself, himself instead
can feel trouble well up within,
disturbance come toward them from without,

I wish they could see themselves as I see them,
and love themselves as I love them.

by Henry H. Walker,
May 25, ’11

to soar

2011-05-29T03:16:00.002-07:00

Peregrine Falcon

“Where’s the ridge you’re talking about?
Is it below where that bird is flying?”

and my world turns right side up,
for he seems to have spotted the birds I’ve sought
so many times here over the years,
I excitedly point with finger and words,
more and more sightings around the knife-edged ridge,
above it flaps and perching,
and we suddenly notice high-pitched calls, almost squabbling,
I use my long lensed camera to reach out,
to understand,
to record,
to save for later,

I joy that the peregrine falcon seem to be back before me,
these unsurpassed hunters of the sky,
they who our chemicals drove away
and the actions of our apology invite back.

I am beside myself
as I reach to soar with them,
we humans truly soar best
when we feel as one with the rest of nature.

by Henry H. Walker,
May 25, ’11

how we see ourselves

2011-05-29T03:16:00.001-07:00

out of doors

when we consider just who we are,
exactly where do we see ourselves?
as we step away and look back at ourselves,
are we inside a building,
surrounded by the stuff our fellows have made?

or are we at the top of a mountain,

by the great mother sea,
by a creek tumbling with it back toward the sea,
or in a forest with our family of plant and animal?

the very words we use might answer the question,
for if we say “outdoors”
does not our deepest self feel itself to be inside?

by Henry H. Walker,
inspired by Jack St. Clair
May 25, ’11

LeConte '11

2011-05-29T03:15:00.000-07:00

up and down the mountain

we hike more together today than do my usual groups,

the diversity of age and gender and ethnicity
expresses a way of how different we all are,
yet each rhythm moves
in sympathy and harmony with the others,
to express how much we are together,

up here on top of the mountain blue speaks to me today

whether in the fractured smooth rocks where I sit,
in the hues of cloud dappled sky
in its dissolving into the rippled ridges ranged before me,
they, like a rumpled bed, remember the tossing & turning
as plates dreamed hard against each other,
now the bed is all smoothed over
by millions of years of rain & life’s making,

on the way down the mountain
the vivid blue of the bluet whispers sharp to me time & again,

the loose rocks on the trail
and even spruce sap, weeping down a large trunk, still speak in blue,

for the soul to be so lifted up as I feel today
the body has to do the heavy lifting,
how ironic,
I simultaneously feel energized, and exhausted.

by Henry H. Walker
May 24, ’11

grounding

2011-05-29T03:14:00.000-07:00

Indian Gap

we immerse ourselves in a recreated Cherokee village

and hear of how an earlier people, a more basic people,
lived their lives below and among these grand old mountains,
a gentler touch, maybe because they didn’t have bulldozers,
either in their minds or in earth-smashing fact,
maybe because they knew the world
and they knew themselves,
and they knew how and when to yield
and how and when to not,

here native peoples crossed these mountains
by foot on this trail for near 10,000 years,
from when this high up was above tree line
to when Europeans spread across the land like the spread of a virus,

my students spread about the Gap
with spruce-fir for their backdrop,
soft fragrant needles below,
prickly bark at the back,
needles on the trees so dark
it’s as if black merged with the green,
a wild cherry tree lightly in bloom at the center,

a muse must be whispering to each
who sit here so open and capable,
processing place and experiences,

and I yearn to hear
what the universe messages through them,
as each seeks to make sense of place, experience, and self.

by Henry H. Walker
May 23, ’11

letting the best out

2011-05-22T08:31:00.000-07:00

a leap, and the footing?

I believe in every student, in every class,
I particularly joy when the evidence before me
fully and deeply supports my belief in my students,

I will continue to leap with my faith
with no sureness of the footing beyond,
I thank my stars for how often I find solid ground,
as my students find the way to succeed
in letting the best of themselves out,

would that our politicians would do so well.

by Henry H. Walker
May 20, ’11

a digital story

2011-05-22T05:57:00.000-07:00

voice?

within everyone is a voice,
particular to the individual
and universal in how each taps the best within them,
that which some of us call that of God within,
what all might agree is that which makes us most human and special,

it challenges any school to find ways
for each student to find the true story each lives,
the path heredity, parenting, and choice leave most open and sure,

today, each of our 14 year olds in the middle school presents a story to the rest,
a digital story in video form,
a story each has chosen from the voice each feels one’s own,
and, true to the uniqueness of the diversity we live and love,
the stories vary as to what part of the voice is shared,
what defining elements of self revealed,
how particular the enthusiasm, the heights, the depths,

we feel a relationship go asunder, anxiety resisted,
place and music and baseball and soccer
the stage upon which to find one’s self,

within and through each story I feel each voice find itself
and each of us hearing those voices
can maybe find our own voice within more ready to speak.

by Henry H. Walker
May 20, ’11

greater vs. lesser

2011-05-22T03:42:00.000-07:00

every moment a test

every moment we live is a test,
a test of our truth,
our truth of vision,
our truth as effort,
a test of our wholeness of self
as the way gets hard
and lesser selves within us
whisper of shorter, meaner paths we might follow,

for example, a self-righteous anger can feel good,
though it usually get us nowhere, fast,

sometimes we’ve already run a good race,
we’re tired,
and then a hill appears in front of us,
how hard it is to reach even deeper
and find the wherewithal to win our way up another challenge,

I’m sad when a student chooses the lesser,
seduced by the illusion of feeling greater
by treating others as lesser,

each test is real,
and we only succeed when we choose the greater self within us
over that which diminishes us.

by Henry H. Walker
May 13, ’11

another Mother's Day honoring

2011-05-08T04:54:00.000-07:00

Mildred

born on a working farm
at the top of one of many of Kentucky’s rich rolling hills,
good soil + hard work = a hard-won living,
and she learned the skills to make a home simply elegant
and how to hold together the family that could so easily fly apart,

the farm girl and homemaker
couldn’t stay down in the country,
she followed her sister and rode her horse to the city for school
and her mind opened as wide
as Kentucky’s sky can be blue,

and she traveled the world in her mind
and she opened herself beyond what is custom
to what is right by the light of her own judgement,
and sometimes her husband’s vote and hers cancelled out,
and she loved to dance her heart away
and to use the dance of cards as a social center,
and to teach her grandchildren probability,

a job at the bank
and no door opened to college--
neither was money available
nor did the culture encourage her,
not even one so very very bright,

and she fell into love and marriage with a dashing young doctor
who she grounded with her common sense
and built the house for him, for her,
and for three extraordinary daughters
who were blessed with her intellect and his
and who mirror his love and hers,

and there in the city she taught herself to sew and to cook,
and her flower and vegetable gardens were a sight to behold,
and she knew to start the water before the corn was even picked,

a populist streak to her politics
and an unwillingness to suffer any fool gladly,

that well-read openness of mind
paralleled by an openness to new foods,
she was “curry” when “curry” wasn’t cool,
tradition equally important to newness:
1 cup of coffee, then it warmed, to start the day,
plus a small glass of orange juice,
half a Coke to keep the morning going,
Sunday dinner must be fried chicken,
steaks and french fries Saturday night,
an elegant supper club and bridge club for decades,
a jar of fresh chocolate chip cookies by the door,
baked two year-old country ham at Christmas,
hopefully with white flecks,
her spaghetti and sauce a comfort food for her kids,
bread and butter pickles, strawberry preserves,
the quality and bounty of her table a constant,

a love of Jeopardy, crossword puzzles, and double crostics,
of thinking hard and clean,
a stubbornness to hold fast and true, to persevere,
a measured life, with rules and routine to keep one steady,
while inside her head and heart soared beyond measure,
fairness deep in her soul and moderation in all things,
except for love,

the only thing that could match her love for children and grandchildren
was their love for her,

Ah, Mildred, you soared with your life,
and all of us can only hope to do so well.

by Henry Walker
December 28, 2003

a Mother's Day honoring

2011-05-08T04:52:00.000-07:00

A Eulogy for (Clara) Jean Beaman Walker July 22, 1910-December 7, 2005
by her son Henry

A woman:
a daughter, a sister, a wife, a mother, an aunt, a widow,
a grandmother, a greatgrandmother,
a teacher,
an inspiration to all who only had to know her
to love her
and to be loved by her,

family always so important:
second daughter so they named her Clara
for father Clarence,
for the youngest Chickie she was “Little Mother,”
and she loved the story of selling fruit cakes
so they’d have money for Christmas
she and Margie racing down Kingston Pike
to deliver and get paid
and stopping to get Santa for Chickie
at the only store still open,
parents and brothers and sisters
so much a part of her identity,
of who she became,

learning always so important:
following her curiosity and her mother’s charge
to get a college education
and continuing on into a masters
and sending half of her paycheck
from her first teaching job at Englewood
home to Magnolia Avenue,
and teaching till she got married and lost her job,
Depression rules to share the few jobs available,
as a girl reading the Congressional Record to her grandmother
who waited for a pension
from her husband’s service in the Spanish-American War,
and who gave Jean chocolates Grandma didn’t care for,
as an adult poring over every day’s newspaper
every week’s Time, the Nation too,
teaching sex education to other PTA mothers,
she and Daddy even counseling,
teaching English, a favorite, and home ec,
loving to cook with kids, who “cut her time to double”,
spreading the mysteries of sugar caramelizing,
a marble slab, a white sauce, angel biscuits,
and summer transparency applesauce,
a favorite story described her as “lost”
till her parents found her in the icebox
eating butter,

every memory wound up with the memory
of what she ate then,

a feminist, will always so important:
she started her own business,
Camp Chewase during the Great Depression,
and hired her sisters and husband,
touching lives and making money,
teaching character,
building the cabin and renting it to pay for it--
we kids giving up our rooms for summer tourists
when Gatlinburg was crowded,
spring and fall she’d teach a full day in Knoxville,
drive to Gatlinburg,
strip and make the beds, clean it all,
even the tub no one was going to use,
drive back to Knoxville
and teach a full day the next day,

Daddy dies,
companion, friend, helpmate, half of her,
and she holds the family together:
Johnny finishing Duke and Columbia Law School,
Henry finishing Duke and UNC,
Clarence finishing UT and Vietnam,
and after her kids were grown and needed her differently
time to help Gatlinburg:
supporting all the good sides in political battles,
a liberal to the core,
EMS folks still appreciative of her effort, successful,
to keep the service in town,
advising on the Convention Center
and the Foothills Parkway,
at every City Council meeting,
all invited back to the cabin
for cake and coffee and politicking,
her Letters to the Editor a legend,
the mountains so important to her:
a “National Park Founder” says her certificate,
hiking with her long-legged father,
out the door to watch any visiting bear,
the Cabin on the Creek a gateway for
children, grandchildren, and, yes, greatgrandchildren
to learn to love forest, stream, and slope,
the longer the cabin can work as such a gateway
the better,
combining family, food, and nature in a favorite story
of sweetened condensed milk fresh peach pie,
plus whipped cream, at Laurel Falls,
including a thermos of coffee, her good friend,
snow cream the way to best celebrate the white stuff,
so like her mother whom she described as never stopping working,
till her body said “no.”
and throughout it all her life was love,
when all else fell away
and she wasn’t sure
who was around
and what was happening
her unconditional love still beamed from deep within,
when sleep and dimness kept pulling at her
enter a little child into her room
and her face became radiant,
eyes sparkling,
her life was love
when Whitney and Clarke’s kids:
Devon, Morgan Jean, Caitlin, and Liam,
have visited her,
her face has been radiant,
her eyes sparkling,
hand firm,
as she knew them,
as she loved them,
as they loved her,

as was true, and is true, for so, so many of us,

her life was love.

the play's the thing

2011-05-05T03:41:00.001-07:00

Bye-Bye, Birdie

I know the space,
I know many of the actors, singers, dancers, crew, musicians,
I lived the time of the story,
and still this show is new and fresh and joyous,

every moment each on stage seems to open himself, herself,
so that through each flows an exuberance
that wakens the most tired of us here this mid-week evening,

faces, bodies, voices dance,
characters are real, even in caricature,
so that relationship is real, too,
and a story pulls us along,

and we marvel at virtuosity
in the collective ensemble
as near 3 dozen make a whole that works to thrill us with sound and sight,
in the individuality
of a lead who channels who an Elvis could be
in a time when convention could also rule,
enough so that a parent could rail against even the word “puberty,”
of a lead whose comic touch as a mother who can’t and won’t let go
pulls laughs from me in my sheer joy at her comic genius,
of two leads who take the whole play to really find each other,
of two leads pinned and trying to hold to each other
as time works to wrench them asunder,

around me parents and friends and peers
mirror the same joy they watch,
I laugh, I applaud, I murmur congratulations,

mostly I feel rightness as each who creates the show creates,
and it is right,
and it is whole,

and I hope that all who create this show
joy in the success wrought through each performance.

by Henry H. Walker
May 4, ’11

the way in the way out

2011-05-02T04:11:00.000-07:00

Heinrich

Heinrich is a force of nature,

he’s tied to the life-force
that drives the seed to grow
and become so much more
than it seemed it ever could be,
that drives one to find another
and we become so much more
than it seemed we ever could be,
and sometimes that drive can lead to children
who reach to the future,
a rope over the chasm before us,

individuality should be far more than self-indulgence,
for when we are true to the uniqueness
that is the best of who we are,
we somehow become closer to the universal,
the way in the way out,

Heinrich is larger than life and he is still only himself,
he is so true to his own gifts
that all of us who know him grow larger, too,
truer to our own gifts
as we laugh and risk and let ourselves be real,
to be real like our beloved Viking.

by Henry H. Walker
April 30, ’11

what a gift she is

2011-05-02T04:10:00.000-07:00

Ann’s Bright Light

how wonderful it is to be with someone
who always sees you as your best,
who spends her life picking up and setting right
what is knocked-down,
who sees what can be and says “Yes! Why not?”

what a gift it has been for each who has been
her student, her colleague, her sister, her friend,

what a gift to be the child or grandchild of this mother
so seared and graceful in the singleness
with which she has had to parent,

Ann carries a bright light
which wakes up the heart as she shares hers,
which wakes up the intellect
as she searches truly for each honest idea,

and woe be unto any
who deny the best of either head or heart.

by Henry H. Walker
April 30, ’11

morning creates

2011-05-02T04:07:00.001-07:00

every morning is genesis

a leaf can be a bird,
a branch be a face,
a glance and a processor inside
calls up possibility after possibility
of what it might have been
that my eyes flitted over,
our perception not just passive,
as impulses come in and get recorded,
rather, we take in and immediately reach back out
to sort,
to feel,
to cut into pieces
and then put the pieces back together
in a meaning that seems possibly right to us,

I love the hour between night and day
when shape and form emerge, as if for the first time,

every morning is genesis
and we are each the chronicler
to whom what we feel as God
has given the charge to record,
as best we can,
we are given the charge to find the patterns,
to hear the story within which we live.

by Henry H. Walker
April 25, ’11

Carolina Friends School

2011-04-21T04:23:00.001-07:00

like a grand theater

the show must go on:

our school is like a grand theater
with teachers and all as producers and support staff
for show after show
directed, acted, presented by the students,
each of whom come and stay for awhile,
if we’re lucky, up to a decade and a half,
as students and staff come and go
what is constant is the production itself,

some of us give our lives to this structure
and to the students who find their way to it,
some others give just as fully but are called to other plays,
to other ways of being true to the best of themselves,
many goodbyes I have felt and still feel keenly
like I did at that moment when I first realized
their heart and their feet were carrying them away,

twice in the last week
some former staff, students, parents have felt a call
and retraced a way back,
it has been a time to reunite in echo
to remember who we were together in that time past,
who we are now still somewhat embodies that time
as an older self hears the guidance of a younger,

this month I also sought out a former student
and a former teacher in Maine,
I wanted our lives to touch again if only for an hour,
yesterday Facebook helped another former student find me and reconnect,
we talked on the phone for 30 minutes, and it was good,
today some of my current students particularly needed my support,
and, for some reason, I seemed even more than usual there for them
in the present of the show
that the best in them ached to present well,

what a paradox that I can be so present now
while my heart soars back and out
to so many former staff, parents, and students,
who still deeply touch who I am,

the show must go on
and the show that is now in production is amazing,

I also remember how amazing each show has been
across what is now four decades for me here
at the grand theater called Carolina Friends School.

by Henry Walker
April 18, ’11

a wave

2011-04-18T04:07:00.000-07:00

constancy of a changing self

who we are now is a wave racing toward a beach,
which, while it looks new and of the current,
contains within itself each impulse that made it who it was
at every point it has been,

as my brother died I saw within him the child
who could not understand what was happening,
and the adult who knew and could not talk about it,
except obliquely,

I know within me that who I think I am at heart
fixed somewhere in my twenties,
and I can’t quite get what happened
to the person who looks back at me in the mirror,

it feels like the self I know shifts back and forth a bit
as the multitudes of those within me assert
and a larger me reads a sense of who the group most feels itself to be
at this time in this place for this reason at hand,

what also seems true to me is that the child
somehow has within it the adult,
at each plateau of equilibrium flashes of insight can flare,
they that will come if and when future level after level is achieved,
as if a future self calls out and is heard before it can even be:

all is change, yet, what I feel tonight, is a constancy of self
that changes except in that it is.

by Henry H. Walker
April 9, ’11

let's seek the fire

2011-04-12T03:51:00.001-07:00

the fire beneath

we distance ourselves from the hard rhythms
of earth, sun, season, of either too little rain or too much,
of the reality that before all else, must be creation--
sunlight to leaves to food,
a metamorphosis upon which can be built
the edifices of our cities and technologies and comfortable lives,
without which chain after chain crashes back into not being,
without that first fire all would be dark for no one would know the light,

we know some folks in New England
who are rediscovering a working farm on 300 acres of rich Maine soil,
land and fields and barn still there from the dairy farm it used to be,
a new house is rising behind the old farmhouse,
some support pillars lovingly found, crafted, and released
to function in form that honors their growth and individuality,
south-facing to honor the sun for the lightening of its gifts,
snug and insulated to remember those gifts,
maybe enough photovoltaics in its future to be off the grid,
sunlight to electricity, so like the trick chlorophyll allows,
for now the old farmhouse holds against the cold and the rain,
a wood stove resolutely heats air and water,
we share popovers and tea with the young mother and her six month-old,

I see the creator in her eyes and hands
as she embodies that initial creation of body and self
upon which all that is human is built,
the father is off working fruit trees for the season
with fellows who share the pruning, the vision, and the prospect of bounty,

already animals embody the farm
and a big garden will go in for this year,
we savor new maple syrup from their own trees
and hear plans for vegetables for “community supported agriculture,”

in my own way I am drawn to that same fire
these young homesteaders seek:
I walk Walden Pond every year I can
and I seek Thoreau’s gift to be simple,
I appreciate myself to the Smokies
and I seek to know its forms of land water, of flora and fauna,

I garden for the joy of soft buttercrunch lettuce, crisp sugar snap peas,
a perfect tomato, blueberries and cherries that almost burn the tongue,
I also garden for preschoolers
so that each who visits can get close to the fire
from which food itself comes:
they gather native pumpkins, sometimes green beans,
and, if we’re lucky and the summer’s been dry,
we can part the earth, and a four year old can reach in,
and out comes a potato, no middleman of store and plastic in between,

many are the gifts that teachers hope students will open and use,
no gift I know of is more basic and important
than knowing the truth of farm and forest,
the rules of the game we play even though we can pretend we don’t,

so much depends on knowing a year
as plant and animal and rock know the passing of time.

by Henry H. Walker
April 8, ’11

acadia

2011-04-12T03:50:00.000-07:00

Mainely

a clean white sea gull flies by to the left,

a dark black crow flies by to the right,
the hilly forest of winter-hardy evergreen and deciduous around me
is filled with the calls of chickadees, robins, and finch,
and behind their pipings I keep hearing shore birds call,

Maine is elemental and stark this early April,
Spring may be ready to erupt,
but it’s crouched incognito behind countless protective curtains,

wet snow holds on and whitens much of this land,
and drip drips from the eaves,

a cool grey mist settles over us all,

some of the land against the Atlantic coast here
is higher than any hugging the shore
north of deep South America,
volcanic granites and basalts here hold against
countless millennia of freezing and thawing, of snow and rain,
and the land in its forms and erratics still remembers
the crushing weight of the glaciers,
melted but a dozen millennia ago,

up here I seek the sea in what I eat
and in grand views along a shoreline trail in Acadia,

where an oft-visited national park lets us hug the wine-dark sea,
she who can break like thunder upon the rocks,
and who holds a wealth of life below its surface,
as if repressed, like a person hiding his feelings,
feelings which churn and make him so much the richer,

no new flowers or even buds are yet visible,
the spruce is still dark and deep in its green
and a cheerful yellow suffuses the green of the moss in the sun,

our science reconstructs the story of plates and magma,
of global warming and cooling, of drift and collision,

of upwelling and settling, the fall and rise of this land by the sea,
which feels so settled to us, as if denying its real past,
our history reconstructs the story of the earliest peoples here
and then tells of the Europeans who dared
to explore, to settle and to farm--
now there are more here than the land and the sea
can support with their bounty,
I don’t know the future, however, I do know
how much the beauty here tugs at our heart to come visit,

today the bright air opens vistas,
the sky is a brilliant blue,
the horizon pulls us toward it over the bountiful sea,

clouds come in the next day and leaden the air,
so that what I see with my eyes closes in,
what I see with my memory and my imagination opens up
again and again when the sea gulls fly by.

by Henry H. Walker
April 5, ’11

our granddaughters

2011-04-12T03:49:00.002-07:00

each a jewel

“She’s performing even when she doesn’t know she’s performing,”
Rachel, the six year old big sister and buddy explains to me,
for no one is a better expert than she
regarding her going-on-three younger sister Izzy,
she of the curly locks, engaging smile, quick eyes, and verbal tours of force,
nothing also seems to get by Rachel,
acute in perception of every piece of the action around her,
and extraordinary in perception of the pattern after pattern
the pieces can make:
figuring out even and odd numbers, with just a little help at four years old,
cracking the pattern of reading now at six:
correcting the pronunciation of “hoped” to “hopped”, just by context,
guessing again and again in sports brackets better
than many who know far more of the details,

now the younger draws the eye of the adults,

for we are moved by the extravagant, the novel,
and we can miss the subtle, the deeper,
the acquired taste that takes longer to appreciate,

each is well worth the effort,
one just takes a little more chipping away to find the jewel,
each just as bright as the other.

by Henry H. Walker
April 3, ’11

a club I'm in

2011-04-12T03:49:00.001-07:00

Grandparenting

at the heart of everything alive
we need to reach toward the future,
for life itself is of enduring--
only that which lasts can remember yesterday
and anticipate tomorrow,
if only in our drives below consciousness,
humans are relatively recent members
in a club of plants and animals,
they that were, many that are,
and all that want to be, still, into the future,

I love the parent inherent within us
who will deny the selfish self and embrace the larger self,
I am undone by that impulse--
that which drives us to have kids, even not of our genes,
undone by how well that impulse can drive
the straight and the gay, the partnered or the single,

I am also in awe of the grandparent,
they of the club I am so happy to have joined,
for to the grandparent, three links in the grand chain manifest in front of us,

the newest aching toward keeping itself going,
at least that’s how it seems to me,
the grandparent has the luxury
of not having to do the heavy consuming work
of forging and maintaining,
plus we can know in more dimensions
what is being wrought
and know it to be wonderful,

we can feel that the best we feel within us
can seem to reveal itself as true as we can hope for
in the smile, the words, the self
that we deeply hope cannot be denied.

by Henry H. Walker
April 1, ’11

design?

2011-04-12T03:48:00.000-07:00

Amaryllis By Morning

just by the chair within which I meditate early each morning,
a big earthenware pot holds a grapefruit-sized amaryllis bulb
who sits there for weeks while Sun comes and goes,
two-thirds above the soil, one-third heavily rooted,
I water it some, just enough to keep the soil from drying-out,
and it says nothing, no new growth, no change I can see,
till one day in March a green tongue of a leaf comes out the top,

I watch it grow up & up, a stem reaching as high as it can,
as if building itself out of nothing;
whoever its workers are, they follow directions I cannot hear,

when it’s high enough for itself, it starts spreading out:
buds appear and slowly open into great flowers,

and I am like all the farmers, poets, artists, children
who have marveled at plant, bush, tree
as each unlocks itself from stasis
and finds within itself vision and energy to bring forth,
the quiescent to the flower, and then to the seed,
the marvel of creation embodies itself,

I know of consciousness in humans and animals,
and I am intrigued by the question
of how much awareness and intelligence
is behind the design within the amaryllis.

by Henry H. Walker
April 3, ’11

teachers can move on

2011-04-01T04:08:00.000-07:00

fellows I miss

some do not go first off into that good night,
rather, they go off in to some twilight, away from me,
which I hope is good,

there is a cutting edge
right where our students take off, or stumble,
maybe even fall flat on their faces,
and it’s right there where intention meets the road
that I feel the call to help student after student get a grip,
realize the control possible, and put the pedal to the metal,

if I take a break, and I’m not there on the pit crew,
I feel that whoever takes my place
will miss something,
and the student, though no real fault of their own,
will spin out and have to start again,

so many teachers, with whom I’ve worked, have left where I work,
and I do my best to remember their gifts in what I give,
in what I learn to give,
in how to help the student take off,

and yet I still miss them,
for, while I love what I do,
I also love the ways my fellows have done the same job so well,
and every new person in the crew
might do it as well, maybe even better,
yet I fear any diminution
of what our extraordinary students need
so each can race forward.

by Henry Walker
March 29 ’11

at the heart of teaching

2011-03-27T10:31:00.000-07:00

within & without

as teachers we meet and we talk,
and we seek how best we can act,
our goal that the best in our students can act,
can find where within them is the potential
that can realize how to be actual,
each then can open anew to the wonder and effort
that it takes to develop a skill,
to ask a question, to find an answer,
to venture effort until it’s right,
to feel right within
with each connection made,
with every taste of excellence achieved,

for me the secret is to know each individual before me
and to find what to say, what to do,
that can help each person cut through the nonsense
and realize the wholeness within
and see where to go to be even more real, full, sure,
all of us need strength to escape obfuscatory thickets
and get on to a path that leads up to the light.

by Henry Walker
March 21, '11

heart & head argue

2011-03-26T03:42:00.000-07:00

Spring Equinox ’11

the last full day of Winter here in the South
is warm enough for shorts and bright enough
for the Sun to show us clearly all that’s outside,

leaf and flower appear here and there

like a magician’s trick manifests just when you aren’t looking,

the blueberry bushes, which took half the winter
to lose the last of last year’s leaves,
they who impressed me with the bareness of their branches
just a bit ago,

now I can’t see through them any more
their leaves so hungry
they’ve demanded to be served the Sun,

birds are passionate in their intensity
for the time is now to find a partner and make children,

high up some of the oak trees drape themselves in gold
as each seeks to be by how well it can make more of itself,

a full Moon breaks the horizon,
but it’s supersize can’t break through
the eastern trees and increasing cloudiness,
overnight the Moon does better at ruling the sky,
an ivory eye that tells us fully of the Sun it still sees,

clouds visit most of the Equinox, the air cool, lightly breezy,

the garden, college basketball on TV, school chores,
and errands in the car fill most of the day,

the grass seed I’ve planted begins to poke up from the straw,
two blossoms on the cherry tree become a hundred,

dogwoods start to blossom, their leaves like squirrels’ ears,

I look for serviceberry and find none, yet,
redbuds purple jewel their branches,
my kiwi vines start to release their buds
like a laugh that has to bubble free,

the air so warm
that thoughts of tomatoes in the garden dance in my head,
and it’s hard to remember that casual shifts of the winds
can invite Winter back for a visit,
fruit trees take the risk and bet the farm, and might lose it,

there’s an ancient wisdom in the ginkgo,
so Eastern and deep in its roots,
and I listen to its counsel also,
for its buds are still cautious,

my heart is with the hope in the flowers,
my head is with the wisdom of the branch,
daring to still be bare.

by Henry Walker
March, ‘ll

the earliest of Spring

2011-03-15T04:13:00.001-07:00

blood root, the star

it’s so early in Spring that it’s still Winter on the calendar,
up here in the Smokies water remembers to flow
as the icy snow high up gives up its grip,
the stasis before the show
that plants, with memory and plan in seed and root,
just ache to bring out from behind the curtain,

and, when the light has come up enough for the show,
every leaf is a prima donna ready for an audience,
ready to use the energy from light and memory
to be, and to reach a year or more ahead,
with bud to blossom to seed,

I’m here in the mountains well before the full show gets rolling,
and I look for the outliers, the opening acts,
the first to find their way from nervous anticipation
to their entrance under the light,

I search out the off-Broadway venues,
the little ecosystem clubs where flora might take a risk,
I find beds of early blooming hepatica,
trillium up and ready to go,
little yellow violets audacious in their cuteness,
and I hope for blood root, a star who comes on stage early,
yet only where and when it chooses,

I elder myself that we in the audience must be patient and understanding
that its entrance is by its own clock,

finally, today, my last full day up here for 6 weeks,
I search out a low, deep, shaded hollow,
and there, by the dropping branch,
blood root after blood root makes an entrance,
each bud erect, assertive, unopened,

the fullness of their entrance will come
days after I’ve gone back home,

still I marvel that the star I hoped for
revealed itself on a stage I could find.

by Henry Walker
March 14, ’11

design & disorder

2011-03-15T04:03:00.000-07:00

an invisible hand

the inner judge within us can easily find flaws with the world,
at least my inner judge does,
until I find a way to overrule it on appeal,

I remember, as a kid, wanting to see the beauty in the forest
and having trouble getting past the bother of the messiness
for no gardener cleans up the forest floor,
I would love to marvel at the purity of the water
and get bothered by water striders,
who, like squirrels (who also bother me), eat what they can find
and neaten up the world a bit,
while annoyingly present in a process that feels messy,

I wonder about design and intelligence behind it all:
Adam Smith posited the invisible hand of the market
moving through countless individual choices,
a collective good made up from the hodgepodge of self-centered wills,
Charles Darwin argued the same,
with God playing dice with the universe,
and as each organism lives for itself,
random change works upon all
and somehow the whole can feel so right,
like a puzzle with each part fit surely to the whole,

random selfishness and competition at the heart of the universe,
life fueled by death,
and the world still expresses an unexpected wholeness that astounds.

by Henry Walker
March 13, ’11

into the woods

2011-03-15T03:53:00.000-07:00

baskins and the gauntlet

I feel ready to run a gauntlet,
to hike & explore & lose myself
in the forest and mountain upstream from me,

I am ready for branch and experience
to slap against me, to wake me up, to test me,
to remake me by knocking off the callouses
with which the tame world so often
hides away the nerve endings
that allow me to soar, to plummet,
to laugh with water racing back toward the sea,

the first blossoms on the spice bush and myriad yellow violets,

to mourn trees dying before their time,
as an adelgid scythes the hemlock,
and a great beech I’ve known all my life
slowly, inexorably readies itself to pass on,

the gauntlet holds true as tree after tree has fallen
across the way I choose to walk,
and branches grab me, poke me,
I only notice my torn t shirt after the hike is over,
trunks force me down, to bow, to crawl,
and maybe 10 times the blowdowns force me completely off the trail,

I even lose my hat for awhile high up
where the hollow often has bewildered me a bit
and today goes even further with testing tangles
that deny there is a way,
I retrace, find my hat, and I make my way forward,

I cross the ridge and drop to the next valley,
there the creek makes a waterfall as dark and hidden as any I ever see,
generous rain and snow-melt impress me a bit
with the size they give to the falls,
here where the bedrock allows, in fact, requires a steep drop,
I don’t spend much time here,
this waterfall seems less welcoming to me than many,

just upstream I visit an old cemetery

perched on the side of the hill,
facing where the sun rises,
ringed by hills at the rim of the upper valley,
a view hidden by the trees in summer,
those trees who weren’t here when those here were laid to rest,

I pull myself hard up the steep trail that climbs to the ridge,
and keeps climbing, though gentler in the elevation gain on the ridge itself,

I drop down to where Cherokee Orchard was,
drop down the road,
drop down the trail,
until I’m back home at the cabin,

the creek pulls me into it to wash off the sweat
and get me ready to know where I’ve been,
where I am, and to find words to describe
losing myself in a day full of subtle wonder,
no great view, few flowers, no grand animals,
just two valleys and a ridge at the end of Winter,
a stage upon which Spring, Summer, Fall, and the next Winter
will captivate me, and anyone else nearby, with the dramas that await.

by Henry Walker
March 12, ’11

retreat to the Smokies

2011-03-14T04:58:00.000-07:00

loosed of some limits

I loose myself
from the yokes to which my will submits
and then works to aim,
for months I’ve felt the pull of project after project,
I have answered each call with my call in return,

I now loose myself from action, for a time,
from those times when I connect myself
and feel what can be, what should be,
when I see the part that would be whole,
and with that vision call to myself and to others
to awaken the sleeper,
to reveal that which is hidden,

it still seems good to me to be with the world
we’ve made for ourselves,
when that world has been too much with me, though,
I seek out the world we humans haven’t made:

rain and snow-melt have swollen the creek in front of me,
the stars are out above the bare beech above,
the Moon waxes an eloquence I hope for,

I love what I do with my life,
the gifts each young person with whom I work
struggles to understand, to reveal, to give,
and how pleased the universe should be
with every denial of the lesser,
with every embrace of the greater.

by Henry Walker
March 11, ’11

it's all about doors

2011-03-11T04:50:00.001-08:00

Science Day ’11

all of
education is about doors:

the infant and faces, meeting the eye and making the connection,
sounds that learn to be language,
muscles that learn to move, to crawl, to walk,
the power of words, of language,
the question, the choice,
the discovery of discovery,

fast forward and one is 10, 11, 12, 13, 14,
and door after door can appear open, or closed,
and one can feel ready, or unable, to open the door and go through,

so we have a Science Day
and each visitor who shares himself, who shares herself,
in talk and workshop is a doorkeeper
who steps from the place of science
within which each works,
where each finds light to reveal the workings
that hide beneath what we see on the surface,
each opens a door and invites a crossing over for a time
into revelation about DNA, gravity, rockets, Bonobos & us,

half the school also asks a question and ventures a hypothesis
that opens a door they find themselves,
ventures a procedure to get through
and reports what each finds on a poster of the experiment,
I am in awe of the brilliance
and daunted by how much work it takes to discipline the effort,
how hard it is to both feel the joy of discovery
and to make the needed work to make it to the top
where the truth is finally clear,
in the afternoon, advisee groups protect an egg in a big drop,
cheer when it survives, laugh when it doesn’t,
there’s even a rueful chant of “Break. . . break. . . break!”

throughout it all, it’s at heart about doors
and the making of every effort to be sure
that each stands open and available
to the right effort of any student drawn to such openness,

I love the kids’ faces as each is drawn
toward the wonder inherent in every moment,
to the joy so ready to release
when the key turns,
the lock releases,
and we are amazed with what we find behind the door.

by Henry Walker
March 11, ’11

Henry's Year

2011-03-09T04:27:00.001-08:00

My heavy lifting

as Fall moves into Winter,
and as Winter holds us inside more and more,
I find it time to do my heavy lifting at school,

in November, we celebrate lives with the Day of the Dead,
reach out to the world with a hunger exercise for our middle schoolers,

and work to touch each part of the world with our imagination,

then with an International Potluck to celebrate the world and or connections
with an exuberance of food,
and then fundraising for Oxfam to help them
help empower people after people around the world,

in heavy Winter it’s time for the school play
with up to a third of the middle school
creating a dramatic whole that fully engages creators and audience,
a community is born and lives again
whenever any of us work to recreate such a wholeness,

and, just before Spring, it’s time for Science Day,

a time for the scientist in every middle schooler
to feel a call to come out and reveal itself,
in experiment, in workshop,
in the taking of risk and the joy of discovery,
and, just after, I retreat to my mountains
where I am not initiator,
rather I am apprentice
to what can be without any of my help.

by Henry Walker
March 5, ’11

the season is changing

2011-03-09T04:26:00.000-08:00

Spring is stealthy

Spring is stealthy, sneaky, unobtrusive,
as it hides away in the dark time,
in the cold time when water forgets it’s a liquid,

now in early March the calendar reminds us
that the Equinox is but weeks away,
and the air here in the South
feels more of the Gulf of Mexico than that of Canada,

crocus I’ve planted are like scouts for spring,

now daffodils, hyacinth, January jasmine, and japonica

follow in flower in our yard,
trout lilies begin their show,
the maples hurry their blooms/blossoms
and use wind to carry their pollen,

if I look closely at branch of bush and tree,
I see that which was hidden
works hard to start to reveal itself,

though still cautious to not come out for sure
until more sure of acceptance,

I see a bluebird today for the first time this year,
right at the bluebird house we maintain for their species,
his thoughts, and hers, she whom I haven’t yet seen,
their driving thoughts must be of the next generation
that will feed on the insects that will awake,
Spring will drop pretense
and release leaf and flower, seed and young,

the light time, the warm time, will hide away for a time
the caution that will become the upcoming Fall into Winter.

by Henry Walker
March 5, ’11

of doors and a play

2011-02-19T01:27:00.000-08:00

Through the Door To Wonderland

“what can be” needs a door to be open for it to walk through,
and it needs the actor to believe
that the right effort can get to the other side of the door
and that what is there is ready to welcome a breakthrough to it,

I look into the eyes of our actors
and I see potential poised to wow us and themselves
with spirit, voice, acting,
with their realization of immensity within
that can find a way out,
I am called to see the bright light within people
and to see the possibility that there is a lens
through which vibrant intensity can and will act in the world

it seems clear to me that every class that is taught
is, at its heart, about doors,
and, additionally, that throughout each day, each life,
potential always seeks its way out into the next level,
beyond the walls that narrow us into the lesser,

I love it when I can find a mechanism for the way to open:

we have found Alice, a Wonderland story that came to Lewis Carroll
and which holds within it characters and situations ripe for potential to release itself,

a version scripted and musiced by an adaptor with vision,
a full third of our middle school found within them the will to find the door,
we found the way to be open for all who auditioned
to contribute on or close to the stage,
and ways for more to assist in realizing the magic,

that first moment in rehearsal moves and intrigues me
when self-doubt hangs like chains
to hold each back from the door,
and then each still steps forward,
to deny the power of the weight to be shackles,
and I am moved with the power that it taps
when it lets itself risk,
lets itself believe,
and together we let that belief carry us through the door, too,

the doubter within fears it is too small
until it starts to realize it is large,
and just right,

as each actor, each helper, each director
gets the line right,
makes the prop right,
helps each step to be correct & right,
something extraordinary happens:
a wholeness gives flashes of itself,
enough makes it through to the next coalescing
that I can feel “what will be” becoming “what is,”
like when letters first drop into words
and then one cannot stop reading,
costumes appear, frames to help transform the subject within
closer and closer to the reality Lewis Carroll envisioned,
a piece of a scene, the daring of an actor who commits enough and risks,
and, in the risking, leaps through to a new reality,
it’s then as if mists clear a bit and a shape hints to us of itself,

two weeks before opening night
we share our Alices and Cheshire Cats
with 3, 4, and 5 year olds in our early schools,
and in those younger eyes wonder sparks
and their belief helps our belief,
and our actors start to awaken into that newness
that promises us it’s coming,

a flurry, a scurry, a hurry to fix this, to fix that,
to help further along each step forward
toward a breakthrough into a new excellence,

the week before performance week
virus after virus subtracts actor after actor, crew member, director
from being fully present, or even present at all,
still, the whole that the ensemble makes moves forward
and, though slowed, there is an inexorable addition,
a cohesion of part after part together into a play that is the thing
and that will not be denied,

of courses, glitches stutter clarity: technology, coordination, whatever,
nevertheless, we cross the threshold,

the first full-scale performance unveils itself at school during the day,
we invite the 6 to 9 year olds in the lower school
and the rest of the middle school
those who did not choose this mechanism
through which to release their light within,
at that initial performance for the first time,
we have an audience large enough
to respond as partner in making our new world real,
and we share our time in Wonderland,
I watch the faces in the audience
and I am absorbed in how transfixed each is,
the jokes beginning to be got,
the world we create is believed in enough by those who watch
that their belief builds upon our belief
and what we all feel to be real, lives,

and then it’s opening night:
all my carefully crafted words, before,
the lovingly realized metaphors,
all that abstraction tonight feels as nothing
compared to the concrete reality of actor after actor
stealing my attention,
when I focus on what each is doing,
as I see who each is at the heart and who each is on stage,
tears well up in me because my heart is full to overflowing with love
for who and what I see before me,
for how full each child is with the self each is given
and the self each makes
and with the wholeness which creates itself before me
and will not be denied,

I offer my tears as a gift to reveal the awe I feel
for each individual and for the group
ensembled into a show that is alive,

Wonderland lives and we visit it with Alice,
while we are there we are entranced,
and when we leave we return home,
changed by how fully each of us stepped through a door
and found ourselves more fully
who we were,
who we are,
and who we can be,
what steps through the door to a new reality
lives fully for only a few days of performances,
and it dies. . .

I stand on the emptied stage after the last performance,
all are gone,
and I sorrow the loss,

I also joyfully long for a return to a golden past,
in our hearts Alice can still live, as long as we remember,
and in our tomorrows we can hope to find the way home again,
when we can find a door and we can step through it,
the best of who we are can again find a way
to glimpse and then reveal the best within us,
that best that can find the way to re-express a golden past
that can remind us of a golden future, well within our grasp,
if we can but remember to believe and to take the right steps forward
through each door after door that can lie before us in our tomorrows.

by Henry Walker
October-February 12, 2011

"a Henry Walker poem. . ."

2011-02-19T01:26:00.000-08:00

to name and sketch transcendence

in the course of being who he is,
and doing what he does,
and noticing what he can,
he saw and felt a moment
in which the kids felt, simultaneously,
the joy of who their team is, and has been,
and the loss of who their team can no longer be,
and my friend described that transcendent intensity
as that which can be roughly held in a “Henry Walker poem,”

my gift, which can easily quake me into tears,
helps me to see, to notice, truly,
the other who is also the best of me,
the we who is also so much of thee,

I see and feel a moment
which throbs with as much of the eternal
as I can dare to imagine to hold,
and my pen and my will leap across a chasm
to name and sketch a person, a time, an event,
each of which challenge entropy with exuberance and hope.

by Henry Walker
February 4, ’11

of schooling and choices

2011-01-12T03:45:00.000-08:00

toward the light

a child comes forth into the world
and is schooled by all that is not him, not her,

from the gardener of the parent who works the ground
so that roots can run deep,
who tends the growing shoot so that it can reach toward the light,
to the bracing realities outside that have their own center
with which the child must deal,

the pain of mistakes, every thwarting,
the school of hard knocks,

and early on that which grows discovers the power of cusps, choices,
the possibility and need to act, and react for one’s own self,
and, if possible, for the good of a larger self:
a sibling, a friend,
anything that is best that seeks to be,
that also reaches toward the light,

I am blessed:
I know parenting,
I know grandparenting,
and I know teaching,
in middle school I work hard as a teacher
to let growth explode into empowerment,
first as the nurturing gardener
who supports the natural growth toward the light,
and also the bracing teacher
who pushes the corrections to keep the growth true,

I love visiting the early schools, the 3-5 year-olds,

for there,
where the growing shoots are ready to lance higher
while early in their time away from the home,
teachers can have a gift
to know and support what works already
in the reaching toward the light,
and what to do to help clear away obstructions
that can deny that growth,
so that the wonder that first came forth
can make joyous leap after leap upward and outward.

by Henry Walker
January 7, ’11

the critic within

2011-01-11T03:58:00.000-08:00

Judge With Care

I worry when the older are too judgmental with the younger,
when we notice an action, or a lack of action,
and we judge that obstinate will is the problem, and the solution,
and we’re sure of that judgment,
we judge that the other should get its act together
and just do what it knows to be right,
we judge that it surely knows how to do it right and just doesn’t,

what I fear is that the judge who externalizes to the other
does so because it internalizes
with judgment after judgment on one’s own self,
a self easily found lacking,

I challenge each of us to believe in ourselves
and thus in who the other works to be.

by Henry Walker
January 7, ’11