pictures halt time

 

to crave to be remembered

how can you hold a moment in time?

does not the very act of trying change the moment?

I remember bristling, as a kid,

when my aunt wanted to stop everything for a picture,

I changed later and realized the loss in the present

led to a gain in the future,

for decades catching moments in photos has been important to me,

letting the person, the event, the beauty within the moment

achingly hope to be held with the pictures I snap,

for me poetry is also a way to strive to hold the moment,

as I sit here now I make lists of what to do,

action more vital at this moment than contemplative musings,

the present, the past, the future, combine in a "to do" list,

my photos and my writing are ways to hold 

some of the depth, the breadth, the reality 

that every moment holds within itself,

moments that crave to be remembered.

by Henry H. Walker

July 22, ‘25

Sacajawea, and what we can know of the past

 

what should we know of Sacajawea?

our present is a time in which willful ignorance

denies the evidence of our senses:

record-breaking heat, storms, floods, devastate,

and many of us won't open ourselves

to the truth of the reality blasting itself onto us,

these same people will not see our President

as even who he is physically,

believing he is half a foot taller than he is,

tens of pounds lighter than pictures shout at us,

so how can we deal with realities

much more difficult to perceive and understand?

I love my family including my ancestors,

but I do not understand

so many of my current cousins' willful ignorance of today's realities,

let alone my ancestors who enslaved others,

let alone my ancestors who saw Indigenous peoples

as worthless, if not indeed that of the Devil,

Lewis and Clark were charged with exploring and understanding

the vast continent north and northwest of St. Louis,

an area the U.S. "bought" from France,

an area where Thomas Jefferson thought wooly mammoths might still exist,

there were people living throughout the Louisiana Purchase,

but they were not "of us" and easily overlooked,

though their help was vital to Merriwether Lewis and William Clark's project,

how can we get past the blindness of our ancestors?

or past how we are blind ourselves?

we force our self-centeredness onto our history,

and we wrap ourselves in myths

that are more designed to make us feel good

than to know and understand what was really going on,

my wife and I have a small home 

in the piedmont of North jCarolina, near the Fall Line,

where the Coastal Plain slips away to the ocean,

here I have found significant artifacts of earlier "owners" of this land,

others who knew themselves within this world

in ways I reach to understand,

but my grasp is not up to the task,

I seek to know who they were, what they felt,

how they knew the land and themselves,

so much though distorts the view back,

consider the story of Sacajawea,

revealed to us a bit through the primary source of Lewis and Clark's journals,

with a French "husband," hired as interpreter:

a man incompetent, cowardly, as described in the journals,

but trusted as to Sacajawea's backstory, and ending,

whereas oral histories within native rendering

tell of a different and fuller life,

often from the perspective of those asserting to be relatives,

with some corroborating DNA evidence that they are connected,

we Americans like a story that feels good to us,

how often do we ignore tough truths

that undercut clarity, deny the differences, the subtleties, 

the ambiguities within what we know?

by Henry H. Walker

July 27, ‘25

what makes us humans?

 

Humans, at their best

what is the best of what makes us human?

in an apocryphal story,

Margaret Mead is said to have argued

that we humans differentiated from our animal cousins,

not because we invented tools,

but rather because we found the way

to take care of others of our kind,

the evidence?

a human skeleton from thousands of years ago,

a person who had recovered from a broken femur,

thus revealing a profound reorientation of values,

from self-centered to altruistic,

our cousins, the deer and the bear, could not find a way forward

into healing a bone, this argument goes,

so that humans found a way to hold and help our fellows,

until they healed back into functionality,

I would add corroborating evidence of flowers and other gifts left in graves

for countless years, demonstrating the vitality of our ties to the other,

there is a profound disconnect with such values these days

when so many in power deny the importance of anyone else to who we are,

this Margaret Mead story surfaced during the Covid-19 pandemic

when isolation reduced our connectivity,

I am drawn to noticing deaths,

to appreciating the life of another,

for life is not just of the selfish:

it is also of the bonding that reaches out to the other, in love,

what makes us best is when love enlarges us to care,

and to act effectively upon that impulse,

when we take care of "the least of these, our brethren,"

when we still connect with the dead,

even when we cannot touch,

we can still feel and act upon the connections,

we can be better than to be as Narcissus.

by Henry H. Walker

July 17, ‘25

like a dream catcher?

 

something new finds its form

though my body now feels limited in how far I can walk,

in what all I can do,

my interior world feels alarmingly sharp,

my mind blessed with a supple clarity,

so that my poetry keeps coming at me,

and rewarding my openness 

by finding and holding my thoughts on the page,

something outside me pulls at me

to notice what's going on within

so that I can access it and release it with my words,

I have a gift within me, 

maybe like the idea of a dream catcher,

or maybe like those who fish with nets,

nets to be thrown out and then pulled back,

I consider what's within

and use my gift of words 

to hold what is revealing itself,

to me it feels elemental, primal,

as if wet clay is within my fingers,

the wheel turns,

something new finds its form.

by Henry H. Walker

July 19, ‘25

the pure tone of her life

 

Connie Toverud

as Connie feels the imminence of her time coming,

I hope she sees the wonderful reality that has been her life,

I see her in my mind, in my heart,

and the Light of who she is blazes bright enough to dazzle me,

I love how much I know of her story,

and I am even more dazzled by how much of her story I don't know,

her story seems parallel to many stories

I have known within the Friends School community,

and also unique to her:

a good person who just wants to be of service 

and cobbles together decisions and actions

that not only help them to achieve what's possible

but that through that achievement helps others find themselves

and their paths forward into what the Divine hopes for them,

I hear her story again in my heart:

she reluctantly goes to an auditorium

where Elizabeth Kubler-Ross is speaking,

Connie stands at the back, not ready to commit,

Elizabeth feels her presence,

the enormous possibilities within her,

and surprises Connie by calling her to the front,

and from that moment on,

she has felt and acted upon that calling,

her heart, her love, her giving,

had to release itself,

with her life Connie has found ways forward

into being there for family, for friends,

for anyone who could find her, and who needed her,

the bell of her life rings with pure tones,

a resolute sureness to what love and wisdom can express through her,

Connie knows the sorrows we've seen

and the heights to which we can rise,

may the Light of her life

join with the Lights of those she's touched,

and celebrate how glorious the Spirit can be.

by Henry H. Walker

August 1, ‘25