webbed to school, then to mountains

transitioning into Summer

the school year abruptly ends

amid a flurry of evaluations and ceremony,

one day I’m there, all webbed to students and staff,

and the next day I’m off to the Smokies,

to slip into different, older webs,

which also define me, 

which give me purpose,

that center and ground me,

nature here not the background

but rather the focus of my days,

this year we chose our piedmont home

to be a halfway house for a time,

we chose to spend a week with house and garden,

and naps, whether in sleep or in videos,

and now we are in mountains:

mostly a green backdrop to the days

with white flowering rhododendron above a tired old stream,

low and gently murmuring,

while inside summer transparency apples call us

to transform them into wonder,

chickens boil for chicken salad 6 weeks from now,

pork-filled buns and angel biscuits call me to make them,

it all feels right to the Southerner in me

who long ago learned a lesson

that body and soul need quality food provided,

so that we can connect better with family and friends,

and deepen how fully we appreciate the moments

we have with each other and  with the the rightness below it all 

that many of us call God.

by Henry H. Walker

June 18, ’16

garden bounty

mid-June’s garden

human convention of calendar has aspects

more practical than metaphysical,

though the year starting near the Winter Solstice,

works to follow the light and the dark, and that power,

Summer, though, fits the needs of the farmer

for labor to fight back the weeds, to shepherd the growing,

to reap the bounty of vegetable and early fruit,

our garden now:

sugar snap peas have finished, as has lettuce,

green beans, squash, and the first tomatoes grace us,

potatoes are almost ready to be dug and savored,

blueberries and blackberries slip into ripeness,

the heavy harvest of Fall opens into possibility:

pumpkin vines race to capture the sun and flower into fruit,

grapes hope for flower to transform into green fruit

and for that fruit to ripen months from now,

kiwi set into fruit that may be ready in October,

how important it is to feel the patterns

and release ourselves into them.

by Henry H. Walker

June 16, ‘16

Siri Us ly

tools and atrophy

how ironic

that just when Google can answer countless questions,

often seemingly instantaneous with the last key stroke of typing it in,

I seem to have fewer questions,

it’s as if the part of my soul

that drives me to question,

to imagine possible answers,

to enjoy the hunt

almost as much when the quarry escapes

as when the quarry is found,

that part of me seems to atrophy

when my electronic servant does it for me,

I read a lesson there to continue to rely on my self enough

so as not to be too dependent on a tool:

to find my way on the highway without GPS and Siri sometimes,

to exercise the muscles of my mind to keep them strong,

my middle school students,

given a simple math problem,

ask for a calculator,

when I’m in a mood, I point at my own head and say

“Here’s my calculator!”

now that every cell phone seems able to record video,

where is Sasquatch?

where are the alien sightings?

but also where is God?

where is wonder?

where is joy?

not all that gives value is reducible to bits and binary genius,

and I need to be master to my own lethargy.

by Henry H. Walker

June 16, ‘16

Hugh Meriwether's father, a tribute

Henry Tutwiler Meriwether

imagine a life always

of purpose,

of planning,

of questing to know,

of finding a pattern that is right,

and holding to it,

of being so conservative that it is radical,

back to the roots and staying true to them:

a marriage,

a partnership for the ages

both in how long it lasted,

and in how fully it fit those two in love

and all they touched,

best friends and partners for 62 years,

in the same house for over 50 years,

sharing the house with children and parent

because family should extend and hold against dissolution,

life should be lived true to the scientist within

who needs to know the questions

and who needs to find the answers,

Henry grew up on a Tennessee farm,

grounded in its immediacy,

with a father grounded in foundational Greek and Latin,

with a mother so well-read that she could effectively home school

before such a path was common,

Henry found his way to Knoxville and the University of Tennessee,

and to chemistry, that science which explains 

the connections of reality as substance meets substance,

chemistry drawing him to graduate school,

and to a lifelong career with Merck and pharmaceuticals,

to the pursuit of results in the lab

and to the result of finding Dorothy, and she him,

like Pierre Curie finding Marie

and arguing the case that, like sodium and chlorine,

they would fit together and make a stable whole,

Henry and Dorothy, the salt of the earth,

who never lost their savor,

Henry loved to travel, for how better to learn?

a wondrous ten day trip rafting down the Colorado with his son Hugh,

decades at Sanibel Island in Florida in the winter,

one of the ten best shelling beaches in the world,

ready for whatever wonders would reveal themselves at low tide,

a naturalist to the core, a birder all over the world,

a curiosity, a need to know, that drove him,

as did a fastidiousness as to how things should be,

the way drinking glasses should be stored, toothbrushes cleaned,

breakfasts made ready, even the night before,

an anxiousness to make sure to get it right suffusing him,

the “Meriwether Worry,”

how wonderful that he could take that which drove him

and ride that energy into creating a life:

pure, full of love and connection,

of being true to his partner,

and true to his releasing a wonderful life upon the world.

by Henry H. Walker

June 10, ‘16

a foolish consistency?

to boldly write

one person’s rule can keep the barbarians away from the gate,

for another that same rule can be a constipated editor

who substitutes protocol for message,

our goal is for words to fit together

and stretch toward truth,

our challenge is to guess right

whether a rule helps truth

or is a foolish consistency.

each of us can bring their own take on it all.

by Henry H. Walker

April 11, ‘16

across the separating divide

different paths up the same mountain

as my colleagues and I each express 

the individual advisees we honor,

I am intrigued by how differently

each advisor expresses who they know,

and I am impressed with the power of each connection,

I believe each advisor “sees” the advisee truly

and has been there and been there for them 

in however the way could open,

no one can see a person from all the angles

through which we can lens ourselves:

what is important is to see true what each can see,

and to leap across the separating divide

with appreciation, with direction, with love,

for then we are there for them,

and they can be there for themselves.

by Henry H. Walker

June 3, ‘16

the child, and the teenager

the middle schooler

middle school:

enter as a child—exuberant, trusting, open, young,

leave as a teenager—empowered, doubting, absorbed in self and other,

a 10 year old finds a picture and gives it to a 13 year old,

of course she’ll want a photograph of herself,

the 13 year old carefully tears the photo into pieces,

no snapshot of physical self,

no matter how pretty,

can compete with the doubting fears

that beset the adolescent soul,

I love middle schoolers

the power into which they are maturing, though,

is matched by the plague of self-doubt that comes along, too,

the closing that comes right along with the opening,

I feel for them, and for the part of me that parallels that effort,

our goal is to help each find a balance

between the child and the adult within,

to remember how to believe

while remembering also how to doubt,

to see the glass as both half-full and half-empty,

and to then find the way to fill it further.

by Henry H. Walker

June 3, ‘16