ADHD: climate change?

how to care about what matters

difference attracts us,

and repels us,

we can get bored by familiarity,

and terrified by surprise,

I sit in the woods and wait,

I want to feel the gestalt of what is,

so that then I can notice a change,

I often hope for a bear to visit,

a pileated woodpecker to land nearby,

the wild turkeys to fly in or wander near,

that same alertness can ready me to notice a threat,

birds know the potential of their death

in every anxious swivel of their heads,

our progenitors must have, like the birds, known

that death could suddenly visit their world,

paranoia can keep us alive, or haunt our dreams,

a kid these days can be diagnosed with ADHD,

a hyper-active attention to everything around them,

however, we reward focus on the task before us,

and penalize those too alert 

to what’s outside the moment and the task,

how ironic that a generation that can need help dealing with ADHD

also notices the real threats to our future

that lurk just outside what we want to care about.

by Henry H. Walker

April 4, ‘19

it calls me home

The “Cabin on the Creek”

for my brothers and me,

home is first, and last, the “Cabin,”

it’s where we children spent our summers growing up,

where we, and our parents, had time for each other,

where land and rock, stream and forest,

were our friends before technology and screens

filed a void we didn’t know we had,

or maybe created a void in us,

after we had them, that only they can fill,

as both of my brothers slipped into their final days,

Cabin and parents called to them to come home,

my own psyche centers itself here,

the last homely home

before nature and mountain

swallow and expand the wanderer.

by Henry H. Walker

April 3, ‘19

as disciple to a master

Earth As Teacher

“Earth teach me. . .”

a recurrent call through a Native American prayer

I often use to direct and center me in the morning,

I want to be as disciple to the master

who was and is before I come to be:

the Earth of rock and water,

of the first life and the latest life,

of death and loss and new birth,

of sunrise and light on our paths,

of sunset and the fading out,

we hope in glory,

for years I have wandered the woods,

sat at the feet of great trees,

pondered the messages of flower and stream,

listened to the stories animals create with their lives,

I can love our human world,

and get lost in the wonders and disasters we unleash,

I contend that we need to take the time

to let Earth teach us what we need to know,

even though we don’t quite realize what we’re learning,

the way that all that is not human

is more the world than we are

I watch a hawk for 15 minutes as it waits,

high in an oak tree,

for a meal to appear below it, nothing spectacular,

I slow down enough to wait for a beaver to reappear,

and I appreciate subtlety in the slow turn of the stars.

by Henry H. Walker
March 31, ‘19

coming into herself

Rachel is 14

my granddaughters are coming fully into themselves,

now each is at the age I teach,

they are within the developmental range

within which I know 

many of the right currents and also the hidden shoals

tonight the young adult of 14 visits with me,

and I am struck by how well she moves

within the troubled waters of adolescence,

opening herself more to the empowering of possibility

than to the short-circuiting of anxious fear,

our society needs the power within such young

to release itself and help lead us away from the darknesses

the adults’ lack of courage and vision have visited upon us.

by Henry H. Walker

April 2, ‘19

written in sand?

a spear point,

from just after the Ice

“it’s not written in stone,”

a way to express transience,

the ephemeral capriciousness

that can be our moments,

a month ago I was working in the garden,

laying down brown paper to hold down future weeds

that would compete with my Native American pumpkins,

I shoveled dirt over the paper,

choosing places to shovel 

where small rocks topped the dirt,

a week later, after rain, 

I was covering the paper with leaves,

and one rock spoke to me

I picked it up, 

and it was a broken spear-point, 

maybe 8000 years old,

a way to touch that long-gone man and his life,

he wrote with stone,

and the stone point faintly echoes of his life,

I love to feel continuity

with something more permanent

than the sand with which we can live our lives.

by Henry H. Walker

March 24, ‘19

expecting the good

what to expect?

“When I was a student here,

the teachers expected us to be good,

and we had to change their minds to be bad.”

he found other schools he has known

to expect the kids to be bad

and teachers have to be surprised by the good,

this from a student from early 

in the days of Carolina Friends School,

a description of how I see the students still,

like my grandmother, expecting the best,

and that expectation helping the best to release itself.

by Henry H. Walker

March 23, ‘19

rejuvenation vs tiredness

Spring Equinox ’19

before the day starts,

the full Moon slowly sinks into the west,

while, to the east, a bank of clouds

announces it is coming,

throughout the morning grey clouds

interpose themselves between us and blue sky,

at celestial noon the Sun has enough power

to hint of how close it is to making a shadow,

our Sol Pole waits for the Sun to let it speak,

but the clouds hold their hands over its mouth,

we celebrate the Equinox anyway,

as I use my wristwatch to show me what the Sun can’t,

the kids still enjoy the half-vanilla, half-chocolate cookies,

inside, my tomato plants ache to be let out into the garden,

the blueberries are ready to open their blooms,

the sugar snap peas just crest the soil,

rain settles in, the cool damp of the day

mocks the bright warmth I hoped for,

the first of Spring always seems like this to me:

the hope rising form the roots

mocked by the tiredness rising from the soul.

by Henry H. Walker

March 20, ‘19