rock steps, walls, tools

Written In Stone

“it is not written in stone,”

we say when the tenuousness of what we’re considering

strikes us as ephemeral, like writing in sand,

I have liked to write in stone,

to make a statement that is more likely to endure,

I built rock steps down to the creek 

at our cabin in the mountains,

decades ago I carefully selected rocks from the creek

and painstakingly placed them, and re-placed them,

with no mortar for binding,

no easy short-cut to fashion stone into form,

rock used to serve both function and beauty,

as if the world and the steps

fit each other with a rightness 

that sings like a flower,

I also savor rock walls from a century or more ago

where someone who worked the land to entice food from it

got rocks out of his field that would impede the corn’s growth,

that would delay the food they needed to get through their days,

the rocks could have been just tossed to the side,

maybe loosely aggregated into a rough pile

that spoke only of the utilitarian,

instead the shaper, the artist within him,

worked the stone into form for a rightness

he felt needed to be born,

Cataloochee

I love to find stone artifacts

whose beauty and undeniable function shout at me

to notice and appreciate them,

Soapstone pendant, experts at UNC have never seen anything like it.
Found in Henry and Joan's backyard.

a perfect spearpoint is clear and assertive

in the words it speaks, in the song it sings,

larger tools, too, can speak clearly,

Probably meant to be halfted, used as a hammer?

A chunky stone, rolled in a game.

Hand Axe.

but I spend more of my time

finding and considering rocks

who don’t speak so clearly,

was it shaped as a tool?

or did natural processes give it form

that only hints of possible shaping?

Found this in my garden.  Who knows?

every rock has a story,

and my wife and I have listened to how geology

reveals the past that led to this present,

I love the shouted tale of a mountain:

the brash power of a pluton, such as El Capitan,

Courtesy of Google Images

where a rock fist endures above the land eroded around it,

a large balloon of magma reached toward the sky

and did not quite make it, instead solidifying and enduring,

so that now it can speak to us, inspire us,

mountains back east murmur stories

as the fingers of time and erosion 

coax their softer shapes into being,

Courtesy of Google Images

last year I shoveled dirt and small stones

onto brown paper mulch in our garden,

the rain revealed a broken spearpoint,

Likely a Kirk, about 6000 BCE.

and I long to touch the shaper of the point,

who thousands of years ago knew this land as friend,

he wrote in stone, and I still read that writing,

stone which sings of his synthesis of vision and artistry.

Spearpoints and arrowheads I've found.

A drill?

by Henry H. Walker

May 6, ‘20

truth revealed: what is it?

in search of a new colleague

a colleague is to leave the school

for the greenness of the pastures that call to him,

some of us are tasked with a search

for who would fit into the learning world we already have,

for who would help us evolve into being even better

at being there with our students,

and helping all reach toward whatever excellence is possible,

we search for a rubric

within which we can judge candidates sight unseen,

then invite promising candidates to visit us online

and answer questions we hope will elucidate

the light and the darkness within them,

still the gestalt of who each of us is,

and who each of them is,

drives us with the emotional figuring

that trumps our rationality,

we live with a sense of what we like,

and what we don’t,

even with what annoys us,

on paper some wow, and some don’t,

in person, some wow, and some don’t,

though in both paper and virtual connection,

each of us is still human,

and thumbs up or down is visceral,

each of us is driven,

and it would be great to know what is driving us,

personas can impress,

but unless they are real to the person beneath,

they may not show us 

who the teacher would be in class

or with colleagues,

I feel very good about who I am with my students,

with how well I can see them,

with how well I can meet them where they are,

with how well I can help them move forward,

God may not play dice with the universe,

but I cannot help but fear

that the kind of search we are conducting

would not have found me, 

and chosen me,

I fear how much it all is a crapshoot,

though I want the die to come up winning,

whomever we choose, and who chooses us,

is more of hope than of surety,

truth may be continually revealed,

yet how do we know what is the truth,

and what is not?

by Henry H. Walker
May 1, ‘20

community within the distancing

distancing away from each other

social distancing is not just physical space between us,

it is the off putting weirdness of Zoom interactions,

those rectangular boxes, 

windows into where the other person is physically,

but eyes don’t meet eyes,

and it’s hard to read the other’s feelings,

hard to get past how distracted the visual says the other person is,

the smile and nodding head help a bit to build the connection,

though other problems abound:

poor lighting so it can be hard to even see one another, 

poor connection so it can be hard to hear each other,

let alone the distance of those who resist sharing their face onscreen,

retreating into their anxieties or the distraction of multi-tasking,

building community at school is a wonder

that calls for many hands and many faces working together,

touching each other with the eyes and with the self,

I joy and despair as I watch and feel all of us

craving the psychic touch of another and another,

while denied the physical touch and proximity

that help the pieces find each other,

when they can then click together into a whole,

in which many become one.

by Henry H. Walker
May 1, ‘20

communities below our feet

of the flower, the seed, the roots below

spring is of flowers,

the exultant shape of color and form,

the offer to the insect of sugar

in exchange for help making more of self,

we mammals have evolved with the bounty

of the seeds into which flowers transform,
often held within succulent fruit,

our eyes and our souls love the bounty

of the gratuitous beauty of the flower,

spring is of the seed,

asleep, biding its time,

until the world seems ripe for it

to swell with water 

and awaken the self within,

I celebrate the first shoots

to break from the ground into the air,

I work to savor the roots which grounded the seed

before its coming forth upon the land,

below the surface upon which we scamper,

the ground witnesses transformations and connections

we only glimpse in the shadows

of what comes forth into the air,

the community we work to bring about in our human world

could learn much from the communities below our feet,

that world where all the kingdoms of life

work for themselves and for each other,

a wholeness we need but which slips away from us,

like a ghost we try to hold.

by Henry H. Walker

April 30, ‘20

rain, sun, breath: miracles

to savor, within the flow of time

every raindrop is a miracle,

like manna from heaven,

a redistribution of the elixir of life,

a gratuitous gift for plant and animal,

and for the soft sculpting of the land,

every ray of sunshine is a miracle,

energy produced in the nuclear furnaces of the sun

cross tens of millions of miles of empty space

to warm out planet and our hearts,

some of the power captured 

in the green factories of the leaves,

every breath is a miracle,

the body still works,

oxygen still there to use,

the supply chain of rain and sun and leaf

gifting us another moment with each breath,

I sit and watch the rain wash over our homestead,

the kid in me has built dams, dug channels,

and now joys in watching water flow within my shapings,

I feel a solidarity with the kid in me

who spent many hours of his childhood

building dams of sand in a creek in the mountains,

that’s what we do with our lives:

attempt to work with the flow of time,

as it inexorably moves,

and we should savor each breath,

and the miracle of each moment.

by Henry H. Walker

April 30, ‘20