holding both the best and the lesser
he was a good man,
he was a great man,
he was a flawed man,
how do we honor another
whose strengths are magnificent?
and whose failings are profound?
how do we honor ourselves?
for we, too,
mix the best and the lesser in who we are?
who was this person?
a student of mine for class chose to imagine a future chapter
in which the characters of the book we just experienced
remember and express people and joy and tragedy
that life threw at them in the novel,
her description of the cemetery, the tombstone,
the difficult memories, all brought up by the next generation's
innocent question of who was this person?
real tears welled in my eyes
as she touched a reality I often live,
for I live while others, about whom I deeply care, don't,
why go to a cemetery?
one answer I got from an older person yeas ago:
"because that's where all my friends are,"
every time I stand at a grave,
I strive to remember the spirit
that flashed in their eyes, in their life,
in the grand effort to be who they were,
to be at their best,
despite the short-circuiting that plagues us all,
I marvel at how well each could be who they were,
I still feel diminished by each loss to our current selves,
I am both gifted and plagued
by flashes of the fullness of the lives each lived,
and how each lives for us now but in memory.
a plague of unpredictability
the forest just above the cabin used to be dependable,
predictable, change came in small regular steps,
like the markings on the wall measuring a growing child's height,
saplings grow up fast, mature trees slowly,
before, paths had a constancy about them,
barring the occasional wind-felled tree,
it used to be easy to walk along the pathless creek,
along what our old friend, Mayfield Carr,
called the "Fishermen's Trail,"
then the Beech Grove showed its age,
no longer a calm secure place
where a wedding could be held, and was,
several beeches toppled, and sadly the greatest beech,
long-suffering from a wound at its base,
fell down the valley within a ferocious wind,
even worse, the hemlocks succumbed to an adelgid,
an insect whose hunger, like all of ours,
knows no limits, save those forced upon it,
so it ate, and ate, and Hemlock Hollow disappeared,
today I make my way up along the creek
and great trunks of downed hemlock block the way,
dead before their time,
at least "their time" as seems normal to me,
I think of the 1918 influenza epidemic
which savaged these hollows,
too many tombstones from that time,
I've talked to those who remember
when whole families were laid low,
seven years ago a Great Fire roared through this valley,
weakened trees still topple from that great hurt,
I find it easier to forgive a voracious insect
than my fellow humans who will not see
how our greed and self-absorption fuels deadly climate change.
Winter Solstice '23
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| Henry in creek, nearing Winter Solstice |
Winter Solstice is more a time than a day,
astronomically there is a point, a pause,
when the Sun stops slipping further and further south
and slowly starts its return toward the north,
yet our world then feels as if we've hit the snooze button,
winter starts, daylight slowly lengthens,
yet its promise doesn't yet pay off in warmth,
deciduous trees know that truth,
that freezing cold must and will assert itself
over us for months to come,
these days we celebrate the Light
while the Dark holds us in its sway,
absence, loss, retreat, all the frame
within which our pictures live,
we are a season away from courageous flowers
who will shout their hope,
with full knowledge that the air will remember the Dark
and find the way to chill us to the bone, still,
that chill will blight if there's too much risk in the bud, in the leaf,
now is the time to know and love the Dark for its truths,
for without absence how can we appreciate presence?
we love the Light and celebrate it with Hanukkah,
with Christmas lights that draw us toward them and joy,
we contain multitudes,
and the time of the Winter Solstice calls us
to notice what the cosmos gives us,
and what it doesn't,
at least not yet,
this time calls us to celebrate what cannot yet be:
we share, and eat, the bounty from the last year,
while we also know that Spring comes
with both hope and despair,
for next year's bounty for the body
is more of Summer than of Spring,
the time of the Winter Solstice finds power in contrast,
a bright morning Sun can follow the blackest night.
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| Sol Pole |
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| Early day Sun. |
Winter Dance Concert, '23
it can be wondrous to experience
what vision, work, and cultivated skill can pull off,
I use words to sculpt an abstract reality,
at its best, that world is more real than the transient moment,
yet dance uses those transient moments to make a whole,
the dance I witness this week easily plunges deep into the soul,
where its eloquence shouts
with fluidity, clarity, beauty, joy and sorrow,
and we are riveted by the synthesis
of movement, music, quiet,
the light erupting from the dark,
the dark swallowing the light,
words on the screen introduce each dance,
the costumes of the dancers well help elucidate the story to be told,
the creation choreographed by extraordinary people
who found a story that needed to be told,
and only dance could be the medium for its telling,
the way did open for that telling,
anything on stage, for an audience, is like the first time
life appeared, bringing organization onto chaos,
it always get me how ephemeral the show is,
after the last performance of a play I've helped with
I usually was the last to leave the theater,
I would savor standing on the now quiet stage
and find both joy and sorrow in what
lived so fully for a brief time,
and which then passed on,
I frantically snap pictures of the dance
and print them out
so that we can at least hold fragments
and ache to hold the whole,
to remember a transient glory,
the CFS Upper School Winter Dance Concert
always transcends and helps us all reach to parallel how well
it found the stories within, and told them with flair and competence.
by Henry H. Walker
December 6, ‘23
The Stone House
the stone house has pulled at me
since I first heard of it a decade ago,
up at the head of the Sugarlands
in the area where Big Branch
drops to the West Prong of the Little Pigeon River,
no Park Service trail leads to it,
we find specific directions through the magic of Google,
the first two and a half miles we follow established roads,
the last half mile we follow the trace of a lightly-used trail
which calls us up the valley,
sometimes the way only clear when we are adjacent to it,
finally we cross Big Branch,
a minimal stream this time of year,
and there the stone house asserts itself at the top of the ridge,
mortar-glued native river rock
holds shape of walls, doors, windows, chimney
for over 90 of the last years,
on the way to it various rock walls
speak of farmers clearing rocks out of the fields,
sometimes with gratuitous sharp edges of line and corner,
here at the stone house,
the workers defied entropy
and asserted will with stone,
most in this valley built walls with wood,
and even chestnut logs cannot endure for near a century,
elsewhere a few hearths and chimneys, mortar-less, endure,
at the stone house much of the owner's vision is still there,
here it's easier to reach back
and appreciate the humanity of they who built here,
enough metal of stove and tool is still there,
lovingly rescued from the forgetting
that leaves and downed trees rework upon the land,
stone and iron are like the artist's first sketch
that hints at the fullness a painting can achieve,
I love our time here at the stone house,
I love that I am still capable of the effort it took to get here,
I love even more how much it helps me
make the empathic leap toward the past
when others appreciated these mountains
enough to build here, to live here,
to see and appreciate the fullness of their humanity
within the fullness that flora, fauna, and geology can create.
