peepers and the ice

climate change, and hope

early this winter climate change

dealt with excess energy in the system

by keeping the East warm,

spring peepers tricked into waking up in early January,

then that energy unleashes a powerful sleet storm

that sends them back under in late January,

and now on Groundhog Day they’re out again,

their hopeful trill calling spring to come forth,

instead cold Canadian air slumbers them again,

the buds and limbs cautious, not yet opening,

daffodils and crocus peek up above the earth,

and suddenly the crocus erupt into color

to change the mood that gray works on land and psyche,

then they pause in a new cold,

I order tomato seeds

and ready their planting inside, 

heat and humidity coax them into reaching from the potting soil,

seed catalogues titillate me with promise,

and I imagine what the growing season might release,

days lengthen and still the cold asserts itself,

mid-February, ice comes down upon the world

and frustrates some of our plans,

I take a picture of bud after bud,

encased in frozen rain,

flower and fruit a dream,

a dream into which we can awake in but weeks,

if the weather will just let us.

by Henry H. Walker

February 15, ‘16

becoming conscious

development and us

we come out of the great ocean,

slowly awakening from the womb,

only becoming conscious when we learn from touch,

particularly the touch of a parent,

we connect with another, 

we ground ourselves in relationship,

later we learn that others have a sound

unique to them, a name,

and suddenly all the gestalt around us

differentiates into things, things with names:

sounds, words that give us a handle

with which our tongues, like the opposable thumb,

can grasp that outside us,

manipulate it,

make sense of it all,

shapes on the page morph into words,

words morph into stories,

and we learn the stories within which we are characters,

later, we learn to write,

to string shapes into meaning,

and we no longer are just immersed in that primordial ocean,

we climb above, we stand apart,

we mirror what we have heard, read, thought,

then the mirror transforms into a creator of new meaning,

and reflects back into the self

until we create meaning as new as we can make real.

thanks to

Proust and the Squid by Maryanne Wolf

for much of the thoughts above.

by Henry H. Walker

February 12, ‘16

which the ruler?

we evolve with our tools

I am intrigued 

by who the master and who the servant,

the technology of reading and writing 

seems to have empowered us

but we lost much of the dialectic of verbal discourse

and the training of memory,

the technology of the Internet 

seems to have empowered us

but also it’s reshaping us,

which of us the ruler? and which the follower?

our minds contend with our tools.

thanks to

Proust and the Squid by Maryanne Wolf

for much of the thoughts above.

by Henry H. Walker

February 12, ‘16

a mechanism for folks to shine

how wonderful to be seen, and to do

everyone needs to be seen,

and, even more important,

everyone needs to find a way

for what one can do

to be done, and appreciated,

to make a difference,

for me, nothing works better than a play,

as a mechanism for many hands

to make a work that is one:

actor, director, choreographer,

costumer, make-up artist, set artists, audience,

from each can come what the ability allows,

how wonderful it is 

when many hands create,

and are seen,

and are appreciated.

by Henry H. Walker

February 6, ‘16

to wake into the fantastic!

Alice in Wonderland

the play comes together

again, with a sense of the miraculous,

order precipitates out of seeming chaos,

a thought thinks itself,

like a poem or story organizes the words to be,

that which was an amalgamation of individuals

coalesces into a unity of a whole

far greater than the sum of its parts,

and each individual also thus greater in the whole 

than when each is just being a part,

Lewis Carroll imagined a world and a story

and made it real with his pen, 

and, just as important, with sharing it,

our actors and our directors find the way

to release the wild joy of Wonderland onto our stage

despite glitch after glitch that hesitate the birthing,  

that challenge any ability to persevere within us,

and, to the credit of all, we persevere, and succeed,

our costumers imbue the power of Wonderland

in their own visions and efforts,

fabrics, feathers, papier-mâché, whatever, 

are magic spelled, as is the work of each makeup artist,  

all together with the cast they capture enough magic

to pull actor and audience into the rabbit hole

and transform us all into wonder,

we are undone and made again anew,

as if each of us joins Lewis Carroll

in his vision of the fantastic,

a fantastic which helps us wake ourselves

into the wonder that is every person, every moment,

after the show each actor seems mortal again,

yet I hope each remembers in their soul

how to transcend the ordinary 

and reveal the brilliance that can shine within, 
then without,

by Henry H. Walker

February, ‘16

words pull thoughts into being

the inchoate within, finds form

I wonder if everybody is always trying to figure things out,

I mostly notice what I’ve been working on figuring

when a hint comes to me of a poem I might essay forth,

just like it did with this one,

I start to write

and then ideas cascade upon the page,

ideas I didn’t quite notice I’d been having,

ideas that had not quite come to fruition 

till I wrote them,

the words upon the page

almost pull the thoughts into being in my mind,

writing like language itself

a partner with which the inchoate within us

can find, know, and express itself.

by Henry H. Walker

January 31, ‘16

will? grace? luck?

the rightness which calls to us

fate. . . ?

will . . . ?

whose will?

God’s,

one’s own?

as my thoughts spiral in the vortex

that assaults us every day,

I keep being drawn to the enigma of grace,

that sense of beneficent power 

with which we can hope to align ourselves,

more like a divine suggestion,
subject to the random and the glitch,

than a great determiner,

there is so much random in the world

that it makes no sense to imagine

that we can earn and deserve outcomes,

I work hard to do the right thing,

and thus increase my probabilities

to avoid the dissolution that bad choices reach toward:

I exercise and my aerobic conditioning helps me,

yet being out in the sun has given me skin cancer,

so far, annoying and quite manageable,

aerobics, however, can’t stop a drunken driver smashing me,

the only way I can understand my wife loving me 

is luck, I found her, and she me,

I found a job, a house, a career, that work for me, and for us,

just as I found parents and a place in the mountains,

both before I was born,

so my only answer for such goodness

is a potential rightness in the universe,

that, if we’re lucky,

with which we can align ourselves,

a grace of God that luck can help us find.

by Henry H. Walker

January 29, ‘16