of me and others

only real in connection?

I question a need in me to feel central to others,

I want to love my grandchildren

and to be happy for them when they’re away from me

and thoroughly into their own worlds,

with me but an occasional thought,

yet I miss them and want us to be around each other,

as a teacher, consciously I hold the student at the center:

I help them get on the bike

and then they pedal away from me into competence,

recently I’ve heard back

two wonderful examples of appreciation

of my careful support for a student, for a colleague,

and, despite my wishes, I feel I need that,

I seek to be happy with what I give

and to resist the impostor syndrome

that whispers doubt after doubt into my ear,

it’s as if I fear I’m not real

unless seen and reflected in another’s eyes. 

by Henry H. Walker

August 14, ’16

November 8—we will have a stress test

America faces a stress test in November:

can we handle the effort needed to keep the republic viable?

we’ll have a binary choice for President,

often for Governor, often for Senator,

like an aging body,

the body politic is beset by stress:

jobs disappearing,

jobs morphing beyond what seems to be in our control,

terrorism infesting the world we know,

war calling, though most of us can not realize it’s personal,

the culture changes—the racial, the ethnic, that which is gender,

the familiar loses to the new, to the different,

the comfortable couch of our sameness

replaced by the aerobic challenge of keeping up with the different,

the “one” questioning whether the “many” can sustain the whole,

while we should be agreeing on the problems

and then listening, then considering each other’s alternatives, 

Washington and the states deny the real problems are real,

and obsess about the trivial,

the real problems obvious even to the young:

global climate change,

dire environmental and disease challenges,

population exploding past resources,

infrastructure decaying, and the decaying being ignored,

the future good sacrificed to present greed,

instead, due to the Supreme Court imagining

that money is speech, that corporations are people,

that money given to politics can be untraceable, 

our airwaves are filled with the best manipulation money can buy:

distortions and lies to push us into fear

so that those who have more can have even more,

like Jefferson, I believe 

in the inherent goodness and wisdom of the common person,

in November we will see if optimism is right,

if we can pass the stress test

and assert the best of what’s in us, not the worst.

by Henry H. Walker

August 27, ‘16

of Tolkien and the transience of moments

the “gift” of mortality

mortality is a gift?

that’s how Tolkien described the immortal elves’ reaction

to the necessary limit to human life,

some time in evolutionary history

our ancestors saw themselves in the mirror of passing time

and considered their impending absence,

how much more acute a moment can feel

when one realizes how transient the present can be,

as near as we can tell,

the consciousness of plant and animal lives the moment

and does not obsess about when one will not be here for that moment

in a future that can and should be imagined,

I continue to step out of the moment:

to live the moment fully, then to realize its transience,

there is sorrow and fear that can then beat down upon me,

but when I re-insert into the moment,

how much more intensely I can feel the present,

for I have known of the future and remembered the past. 

by Henry H. Walker

August 15, ’16

to be there for the kids

transitioning back to school

school calls me:

the kids I know,

and the kids I do not yet know,

they all call me,

they call me to ready myself

to know them, to support them,

to help them find paths forward,

logistics call me, too, but not as loudly:

the preparation of my room,

the gathering together of books, materials, plans,

at the heart of my classroom,

I need paper and pen/pencil,

and now simple computers to word process,

and, when I’m lucky, to be there to help with answers

when the students realize the questions

at the heart of where their learning can take them,

as our beloved dog, Eli, butted up 

at the normal limits of his allotted life-span,

I watched him try to jump, the way he had all his life,

and he couldn’t, 

for external reality no longer would allow

who he felt himself within to be,

I want to be a teacher

as long as what I can accomplish with my students

is close to what, inside, I want myself to be with them.

by Henry H. Walker

August 16, ’16

of bears and falls, and sweat

Cades Cove in Mid-August

there is a valley,

just west of the great wrinkled upthrust

of the southern Appalachians’ high ridges,

with a limestone geology surrounded by pre-Cambrian sandstone,

Cades Cove like a window, contend the geologists,

into the sky great green rounded mountains reach into the clouds,





tractors and grazers keep the fields low and grassy

so that turkeys and deer have a home,

and views are open enough from the absence of trees

that bears can often be seen,

today, for me, in a wild cherry tree by the road, 

I hike hard down the stream which empties the valley,

bedrock strata hold and channel the water as if shelves,

I fear for the fish, for if they venture forth,

a kingfisher, a heron, a fisherman can be upon them,

it’s much easier to hide in the rest of the Smokies

where geology narrows, deepens, and darkens the streams,

I find myself at a great waterfall, Abrams Falls,

close to the lowest elevation in the Park,



I come to the cove hoping to see bear,

but I knew a waterfall would not be as elusive,

my heart, my lungs, my soul loved the effort and the result,

though the humidity wrung prodigious water from me,

I take plenty of pictures of the falls,

cardinal flowers, the ridge top, the flat stream,

and I pick up a bag full of trash thoughtless hikers left on the trail,

on the way out of the cave

a bear enjoys a mid-day meal of cherries









while I watch and photograph him,

I was prepared to miss the bear

and to still savor the visit,

I appreciate the gratuitous act of kindness

that the universe shares with me through the bear.

by Henry H. Walker

August 15, ’16

a trail through the trackless

the introvert and nature

the introvert in me needs nature:

unfenced, unpruned, unbulldozed flat, not neatened,

untamed with right angles and human reflections,

I like to fit into the natural world

and let it heal the frenetic in me,

I do like a trail, though:

today I wandered through poison ivy thickets,

spider webs and bugs came at my eyes,

a good trail harmonizes with forest and land,

and allows me to focus on how the notes of my passing through

can blend with the melody the world can sing without us,

I want to be like a good trail with my life,

I want to make others’ experience of themselves in the world

more conducive of revelation than often possible

while blundering through a trackless wood. 

by Henry H. Walker

August 14, ’16

"webs of sorrow"

time past, and sorrow

Yeats wrote of “great webs of sorrow”

hidden in a Druid talisman

which accessed spirit and self moving through life after life,

I thought of that poem today

as I, too, accessed memories,

hidden in places and in me,

I return to my Smoky Mountain home

and slip into being here where the world feels right,

yet, at the same time,

memories of special people here, long gone,

tear me up into sorrow,

even memories of myself:

playing here as a child,

raising kids by the stream,

sharing meals on the porch,

watching granddaughters fall down a rabbit hole

into this as a wonder land,

all of this can make me sorrow,

I just revisited cardinal flowers by the creek

who flare their rich red glory every mid-August,

for my wife and me, they are a herald of the end of summer,

time to go back to the lowlands to teach at our school,

the cardinal flower a yearly reminder that change is upon us,

I can’t be clear about what’s in front of me,

today I feel very clear about what’s in the rear-view mirror,

part of my soul feels trapped in a “web of sorrow.”

thanks to "Fergus and the Druid" by William Butler Yeatrs

by Henry H. Walker

August 13, ’16