willy-nilly we change the world

of the Winter Solstice 2015

Walker Prong Smokies

as the year winds down,

Canada sends us a taste of cold

to flurry snow on the mountains

and start to ice 

where water splashes and drips and seeps,

the steeper parts of the trail today take caution,

and enough ice slicks a high section

that we retreat back down the valley,

bright above me a quarter moon

silhouettes the reaching trees

whose leafless limbs remember summer and anticipate spring,

after writing these words, days pass,

and the Winter Solstice comes and goes behind curtains of gray,

a celestial show hard to notice and remember 

when we can’t see it and feel it,

unseasonable wet southern air denies 

that it’s time for freezing cold,

willy-nilly we change the world 

for our comfort, for our whim,

and this year the world reminds us

that we may have the power of a god,

but our souls are often too young to have wisdom.

by Henry H. Walker

December 24, ‘15

of Rachel, Izzy, and Max

the joy of grandchildren

every child’s path from potential in the genes

to flesh and blood and soul reality

can be wondrous if growing pains

can be managed into birthing labor,

a grandchild can be particularly wondrous:

a reprise of what we remember in parenting,

with far less of the moment-to-moment managing and worry,

we have spells of absence and then presence 

so that  their development for us is in chapters

rather than easy-to-miss small incremental steps,

a 10 year-old fully coming into her intellectual and soul power,

a 7 year-old who can burn and joy with the fullness of her heart,

a 3 year-old programming himself

while hardware and software update faster

than he can readily reconcile,

as grandparents we love and appreciate

without condition and with wonder,

we joy with their joy and sorrow with their glitches,

as each gives birth to the best each can figure how to be.

by Henry H. Walker

December 26, ‘15

below an old growth forest

a community in the soil

it’s easy to be impressed by visible thrusts

within an old growth forest, 

the great trunks of trees whose lives match countries

and dwarf the human life-span,

now I’m intrigued by the roots below it all,

they who have intertwined and commingled 

since the last ice age, never dying away completely, 

individuals pass and dissolve away back into the whole,

now the hemlocks die so much en masse 

that sun and blackberries have their time on the ground,

I wonder what consciousness imbues the roots,

what connections? communication? community?

the roots as a community have endured for millennia,

and though I probably can never know just what goes on

in the intertwined mass of their lives,

I care about them anyway.

the whales sing to each other,

and we don't quite understand it,

and it is enough for me, for now,

to appreciate that something extraordinary exists below

that I cannot yet fathom.

by Henry H. Walker

December 27, ’15

to unwrap a present

I find a picture

“let me go over there to see if there’s a picture . . . “

I announce, and I go there,

and there is a picture waiting for me,

as if each is a present that I just need to unwrap,

today a particular juxtaposition 

of light and water and rock and wood

within my eye and open to my shutter,

an angle, a take, a frame

that I hold a moment, 

beauty, rightness, a photo,

some things shout of the picture inherent:

a vista, a waterfall,

 a sunrise,





 a sunset,

the smile of a toddler,

the twinkle in an eye,

though even with the shout,

choice and timing still matter, 

a photographer needs an eye

and needs to train the eye

to see if there’s a picture,

and, if there is, figure how to capture it

before it is gone,

or before we’re gone,

at times I search for a particular picture,

for example, I looked for years for snowy high mountains

above luxuriant flowers, and one day I found just what I wanted,

today I found a still pool of water with an intriguing reflection in it,

icicles above a dropping creek, 

and club moss assertive

with dappled sun and yesterday’s light snow below them,

I often check if there’s a picture, and often I find and unwrap it.

by Henry H. Walker

December 20, ’15

the "why" of it all

whence the spirit

I am intrigued by child development,

that progress from the womb dream into our tactile world,

there to learn what one can do and thus who one is

within the constraints and possibilities of tangible reality,

and then to learn the more intangible realities 

of connections with others,

I am also intrigued by adult development.

when young, physical development empowers,

when aging, physical development disempowers,

yet, if we’re lucky and work right at it,

the spirit can learn and remember 

to release the power inherent within it,

my parents gave me a great gift of the intangible:

the desire and drive to know, to understand

the “what” of it all,

the “how” of the cosmos,

yet I also want to know “why,”

the riddle that consciousness faces every moment,

I want to understand the order

the universe releases to build complexity, to resist stasis,

to use the self to subsume the self into enduring rightness.

by Henry H. Walker

December 18, ’15

a vengeful God, or . . . ?

time to grow up, America

I hope our country can grow up.

in a child’s development

the parent, early on, can have mythic power:

the mother who never turns away

and will hold us tightly in her arms,

the father who stands as a bulwark

against anything scary,

the one who keeps us safe,

then we grow up,

parents can become smaller, frailer, limited,

maybe even more impressive in how well each can do

given the constraints reality imposes,

today in our country I hear the child in many

demand a father to protect us,

an Old Testament Jehovah, 

angry and strong and violent,

many deny the New Testament

which hopes for us to grow up

and fully live in a world of grays,

with exceptions to the rigidity of Mosaic Law,

the charge to let our hearts live as much in love as they can,

the hope for us that we will resist giving in to fear and violence

as much as that way can be denied.

by Henry H. Walker

December 14, ’15

oh, Christmas tree. . .

stay the dance

I often feel that as we dance through life,

we rarely know the source of the music 

that drives our feet,

that moves us to move, to choose,

that pushes us this way, or that,

I sit next to our new Christmas tree

and marvel at its pungent fullness,

its sense of contrariness to the loss of leaves outside,

to the fall of needles from the pines,

to the diminution of light,

we bring a balsam, a Fraser fir, into the house,

and it laughs at death and resignation,

some of our cousins sleep through the dark and cold,

we humans, however, stay active, and working,

we heat and light the boxes we live in,

yet what can move us this season is the ancient tradition

of a cut evergreen, dazzled with ornaments and lights,

each Christmas tree challenges us to fully live

and to deny the call of the dark to quit the dance.

by Henry H. Walker

December 6, ’15