a door, not a wall?

 

the human and bear world

I love for my world to touch another's world,

for then I can work to understand and appreciate

what we have in common

and what diverges from my first self-centered take on it all,

diversity seems to scare some,

for difference feels of the stranger, and the stranger is to be feared,

rather than just different strokes for different folks,

our differences can be more like spices

that actually set off and thus enhance

what we have in common,

and let us grow toward what we can like in the other,

our family, who we are becomes bigger,

and even more toward the whole we hope for,

a bear crosses the creek,

strolls between our house and the neighbor's,

he doesn't know me,

and if I appear to him as stranger,

as different, intruding on his world,

he can be defensive,

otherwise, he calmly goes about being just who he is: 

interested in his surroundings, hungry, snacking before dark,

sound is often how he is activated to worry,

I am careful where to place my feet

among the dry, crinkly leaves of this time of year,

I move slowly, I move especially when his eyes look away,

still his poor eyesight and excellent hearing, warn him,

and he makes a desultory feint charge toward me, his heart not really in it,

I just pause and do not move,

he reverts to just being in his own world,

walnuts on the ground grab his hunger,

and his powerful jaws emphatically break them into food,

he sees a parked car,

an easier nut to crack,

and opens its doors,

finding a few enticing possibilities 

that he removes from the car,

he leaves,

another bear appears, savors what seeds birds have left below the feeder,

and then spends 20 minutes working to find the way to the feeder itself,

he is not successful, just as many hunts are not,

here at our mountain retreat

the human world and the bear world

shift back and forth into and away from each other,

I want the edge between our worlds

to be a door, and not a wall.

by Henry H. Walker

October 29, ‘24

not yet time for bare branches

 

a blazing pillar

Fall can be a powerful metaphor

for how a life can be of glory near its end:

deciduous leaves drop away the green of their work clothes,

for it's time to retire from producing substance,

the maple, the hickory, the tulip poplar,

reveal who they are behind who they've had to be,

anybody could be proud to be as a ginkgo tree

when it has to decide to give up on the work of the year,

and can blaze golden with who it is at its heart,

like humans, the trees can know it's time

to lay down who they've been,

and, at least for a moment,

show who they are down deep,

far too often a tree will be bought low before it's time,

just as people can be brought low too early,

my hope for everyone is that we can be as the ginkgo,

enduring past what might be expected,

and then to be as a golden pillar,

which both knows the bare branches to come

and the glorious reality that was.

by Henry H. Walker

October 29, ‘24

the frontier of land and sea

 

divine without, divine within

the coast in Maine does not subtly transition from land to sea,

as it does in the flatlands of Down East North Carolina,

here "Down East" is where hills drop quickly to water,

whether ocean, or river, or bay, or lake,

here is where rocks brazenly endure 

and waves crash with exuberance,

here remembers the great glaciers

in the roundness of mountains and the solidity of bedrock just under all,

this mid-October color flares tree and shrub,

so sometimes the road is a golden tunnel

and maples blaze so red

that they are an artist's expression of patterned fire,

even the green of the spruce is vibrant,

my wife's sister has chased where land meets mother sea,

where the ancient beauty of tempestuous ocean is nearby her,

where a home can be made 

in Santa Barbara, San Francisco, Olympia,

Bar Harbor, Castine, Ellsworth,

there where it's the frontiers that attract,

the edges between two worlds,

the ocean called to her to swim in it,

to literally immerse into its edge,

to walk its bounds with feet and soul,

to savor its bounty on the table,

on the walls, and in her heart,

how parallel the avian world is to hers,

bounties of birds thrive just where she does,

both feed on the possibilities such abundance casually creates,

the Divine allows glimpses of itself

here where frontier rubs off the callouses

that the commonplace can too easily allow

between the divine without and the divine within.

by Henry H. Walker

October 21, ‘24