experience passes o

what was, isn’t

I wonder:
does a jigsaw puzzle, solved,
ever feel sad as pieces are pulled away?

Buddhists can create sculptures of sand
which least a brief breath
and then the grains slip away from each other
and that which was, isn’t,

we pull together family and friends,
the logistics of things and the dream of what can be,

we ready ourselves to work our way up a mountain,
to open ourselves on top to know people and place and experience,
more fully,
more deeply,
than the hypnotic regularity that day-to-day can become,

while in the moment I only occasionally feel
past and future come at me,
yet when I’m down the mountain,
and people leave, back to their own places and time,

 every leaving is a loss that diminishes me,
for a chunk of who I am
is the experience we’ve built together--
before, then up, on, and over the mountain--
pulls apart:
grains of sand come together,
and what is built in the material doesn’t last,

may we remember and treasure what was,

and what can be.

by Henry Walker
July 30, ’12

scribbles

substance over form

I scribble words down to explore what seems true,
and I spend little effort forcing hand and pen
into precision of shape of letter,
 I want what’s in my head and heart
to shape itself enough in words that I can remember it,
and the shape seems furtive as it attempts to slip away,

it can take me awhile to decipher what I’ve written,
as the writing seems more of scribbles than of care,

when the shape of a letter means a lot to me
I lose myself in form and substance slips further away,

almost like the knock on the door Coleridge heard.

by Henry Walker
July 31, ’12

junk food for the soul

save us from distraction

not always do we know what we want,
for what we want and need at our deepest
can be denied when distraction comes easy,

we need to open ourselves to the source,
to the primal, to the first movers,
yet the immediate, the sensation, the easy word
draws us and we can be no better
than a moth flying into a flame,

nature, with original energy, needs us to notice it,
to lose ourselves in rhythms and melodies not just our own,
yet, just as we love junk food for the body,
we swallow junk food for the soul,
whether in the words of an “expert”
or in our tendency to circle and talk
as if what we facebook together
can protect us from an emptiness that calls to us,

we need the harder path
so that the source keeps us from losing ourselves
in the secondary, in the tertiary,
the social candy that leaves us empty,

and yet it is hard, oh so hard,
to slow down and receive,


until we can hear the wind.

by Henry Walker
July 29, ’12

clearing the clutter

clarity

hard work can shake away life’s extraneous clutter
as if to remove any blinders that lead us away
from what is most vital,

I hike hard up a mountain
and I become conscious of myself as body:
eye and feet to find the step,
leg, heart, and lung to move me up the trail,


and I become conscious of myself as spirit
as fern, fungus, and flower are there for me,


as well as vistas,
so that while I am most within me
I can be most outside of me,

today, even the air is clearer,
the sun sharper as light is not blurred
as it shafts through the forest,

a haze of clouds swallows us at sunset
as if to remind us that weather can be more of grey
than the black-and-white of distinction,

 

in the hours before sunrise, the clouds go away
and the stars are diamond white points
who prick the emptiness we call black,
even the Milky War visible to remind us of our neighborhood,
shooting stars flare in quick bursts of life
as that beyond us touches us,

dawn takes its time to bring color back into the world,

the eastern horizon like an art teacher,
showing us different palettes of blue,
a ridgeline becomes individual trees,
shades of red, rose clouds all around the sky,
and Orion dissolves, though Venus and Jupiter last awhile in the sky,

the Sun pulls herself up over Mt. Guyot
and a new dawn awakens the world,


this trip up, on, and over the mountain always wakes me up,

and I strive to remember the clarity I feel
when the clutter shakes away,
and I can be back and real.

by Henry Walker
July 29, ’12

of stone and water

write in stone, live in water

every waterfall draws us

 as two great truths reveal themselves there:
the need for solidity, as rock holds and holds,
the need for fluidity, as water moves at the heart of life,


I love how much history stone can hold:
memories of sea and of fire, of cataclysm and transformation,
of the human eye who shaped point and wall,
of those who wrote in stone a bit
while most of human lives flows away to be forgotten,

yesterday a storm thundered over us and then up mountain,
and the creek roared with its new charge,


whenever our batteries are running low
water in fall or sea quickens our blood

as we remember the charge to flow with grace and power,

we can write in stone
but we live in water.

by Henry Walker
July 22, ’12

pass the baton

life, a great race

life is a relay race
in which we can get the baton
long before we feel ready to run,

I sit here and think of my father
and of how much he would love to hold my grandchildren,

in his arms and in his heart,
to play with them, to throw them up in the air,
to see in them what I’ve heard he saw in me,
a “just wait till you see Little Henry,” I’ve heard tell he’d say,

our part in the race can finish earlier than seems right,

nevertheless, the race goes on,

and each runner checks within, reaches deep,
and pulls out an effort to give the best,

my father was amazing,
and who I am only hopes to do as well as he
with what is possible for me,

I am undone by every moment with my grandchildren,
I am even more undone when I imagine my father with them,

the baton is precious, may the race continue on,
and, as we run forward, may we remember and honor all those
who came before us in the great run.

by Henry Walker
July 25, ’12

potential promises

tomorrow hopes for greatness

with each child tomorrow hopes for greatness,
like a gambler who throws the dice
and hopes that chance will smile,
we come together, and a child wends its way
from conception through gestation, to birth,
and then through the gauntlet of growing-up,
through the potential chaos that impinges on a child developing,
as if to dare her, to dare him
to beat the odds
and achieve the greatness the potential within promises can be,

I see greatness within my children and my grandchildren,
and within each student I dare to teach,

I celebrate every time greatness
finds a way to move itself through the gauntlet
toward the tomorrow that always hopes
for the best that can free itself to be.

by Henry Walker
July 22, ’12