the killing frost of hate

 Spring Equinox '25

this Vernal Equinox slips up on me,

as if Spring decides to be sneaky,

to hold, to hold, and then to rush releasing

in little explosions of botanical surprise,

all of a sudden the redbud exclaims in blossom,

a sarvis transforms, 

as if overnight, into exquisite flowers,

many buds awaken,

though the beech leaves still hold the light tan of last year,

the beech takes its time to get up in the morning,

I rush the change in the garden,

risk planting nine tomato plants I started from seed,

the fear of frost often nearby,

two plantings of sugar snap peas,

two plantings of buttercrunch lettuce,

they're all up and prospering for now,

I push for a head start on the growing season,

a light rain came by today,

now the sky is blue and white,

with only some memory of gray 

in the cumulus billows,

though today is of balance, 

day and night, half and half,

our politics condemn us with one half 

thinking it is the whole,

and acting upon the truth of its one side,

many think they alone are the light

and feel that we are the dark,

and need to be forgotten,

that's what can happen with anger,

we throw ourselves into a zero-sum world

and imagine that the prison of our own ego

is somehow liberation,

that our indignation is righteous,

in the natural world light is coming into its time,

in the political world hate is replacing love,

denying love's very existence,

and that's tragic. . .

I savor the flowers before me,

and the incipient beauty the garden aches to release,

may we release our better selves,

rather than the killing frost of our hate.

by Henry H. Walker

March  20, ‘25

depends on the lens

 

complexity in history

What is history?

I've loved to look back,

to study how the world used to come at us,

what are the lenses through which to see the past?

as we seek to grok just what happened,

just what people thought,

which choices were available,

which choices were chosen,

I hope for lessons that can erupt,

full-blown, out of our forehead,

but I know that such epiphany can be 

as enigmatic as Delphi,

a common trope is that returning soldiers from Vietnam

were verbally assaulted upon their return,

accused of being "baby killers,"

did that happen?

I'm sure it did, sometimes,

yet how universal seems questionable to me,

such verbal assaults never happened around me,

nor were they in my brother's experience,

he who was drafted into Vietnam in 1968,

he who never wanted to be in Vietnam,

he who spent his last years

striving to understand what happened

and to move forward into how he should feel about it all,

we don't like indeterminacy,

the frustrating gray,

like days that aren't either sunny or raining,

if we seek to make an empathic leap into history,

we should work to understand complexity,

the muddle, the din of countless voices

that can confuse our understanding,

I work to grasp that those in the past were like us,

doing the best they can,

and not gifted with knowing how it will all turn out,

what might be obvious to us now

might then have been indecipherable,

overwhelmed by the reality they lived,

we can see how it turned out

and we judge them for not prophesying rightly,

I don't want to whitewash history,

but I am still daunted by how hard the challenge is

of seeing and expressing the complexity of being there,

at the time, and understanding the cusps that called to all,

nuance can easily get lost, ambiguity forgotten,

and gray can overcome black and white

and swamp us with obfuscation,

we then lose determinacy,

in such turmoil we might gain the uncomfortable wisdom

of realizing our heart's reality is black and white,

and the world we have to deal with

easily slips into the gray.

by Henry H. Walker

March  18, ‘25

the natural world can call us

 

caring enlarges us

the pandemic shone light 

on on our human need for binding ties,

we need connection with the other,

to validate us, to reassure us we're not alone,

to help us fit ourselves into larger wholes

to escape the loneliness that can be our ego,

our prison, until our heart reaches out, 

and we care,

the screen was a pale substitute for flesh-and-blood realness,

many of us re-found relationship with plants,

for, with them, we don't share contagion,

and they are cousins to us,

even more the animal world called us,

particularly with the pets

who enlarge our families,

and are even closer to us as family than the plants,

I talked last evening with a high school senior,

who, in Covid Time, found opportunity to help a neighbor with her sheep,

and he found himself transformed by relationship to them,

he learned their world, transfixed by difference and similarity,

by the wonder that each life breathes in and exhales out

with every moment of their being,

he became so committed to ram and ewe and lamb,

with each moment of their lives,

and thus with his friend's world

that she gave him her Shetland sheep in her will,

and he is able to maintain that sense 

of rightness in the world after her passing,

his face transforms in his eloquence about his new reality,

a connection such as we all need to other life,

to a larger self that calls to us,

that calls us to care,

and thus we are much the better 

when we answer that calling with our full self.

by Henry H. Walker

March  9, ‘25