who one is, who one is not

 

caring without empathy

every person is challenged

by both who and how they are

and by who and how they are not,

I am gifted, and cursed, with empathy,

I am pulled to consider the sorrows of others as my own,

and that leap into their world bonds me to them,

and the bonding hurts,

those who do not have that empathic leap within them

can still care, and love, just as much,

but it must be frustrating

to feel just as strongly,

yet to not understand the others you care about,

maybe like a hearing-challenged person,

they want to there for the other,

they just can't hear what is happening,

it's the social knitting into functional connection

that is just beyond the grasp of their caring,

all of us need to be gentle with ourselves,

and work to hold the other close,

no matter how clumsy the effort feels.

by Henry H. Walker

October 7, ‘26

how to see the ocean

 Maine and Its Water

water is everywhere, 

and also mostly invisible to daily life,

the state boasts a long coastline,

intricately woven into the land,

the ocean so easily accessible

that lobsters, shellfish, haddock, and more,

find their way from the depths 

to being savored on the plates,

yet the roads usually are of the functional,

getting from here to there,

with only an occasional glimpse

of an expanse of flat-wrapped salt water,

rarely, except in the national park, is the view out 

celebrated with overlooks by the road,

maybe a view of a harbor with idyllic anchored boats is presented,

for that, it's ok for a town, a restaurant,

to notice the water,

I miss being able to center my world upon the surface of the water,

for, to me, that is a required first step

to imagining the depths and breadths

of subtlety and audacity

teeming beneath the placidity

that great expanses of level sea express,

too easily we slip into lack of notice,

I think about an English manor

in which the upstairs, masters and mistresses,

required the downstairs workers,

but rarely noticed them for themselves,

the ocean deserves better.

by Henry H. Walker

October 6, ‘26

a force of nature

 

Martha

Martha:

a force of nature,

and of carefully-crafted will,

I can imagine many strong ancestors

who, too, had their dream,

and who, too, asserted for self and family and the future,

with the indomitable spirit I still see in Martha,

in a month an election is coming

and she and her friends use her garage to disseminate literature

to help inform the electorate

of the issues and choices available,

the natural world has long been a love,

no one I know in the family 

is better than she as to birds,

where to swim,

where to live near the ocean and its great gifts,

when society was reluctant to allow open doors for women,

she still found the way to exercise her mind

all the way to a Ph.D. and Cern,

she labored to help students

in college after college on the coast

to find their way to use their gifts like she has,

no one I know is more devoted to family than she:

eyes a-twinkle, particularly as to sisters and their offspring,

and to  first cousins, spoudes,  and their their next generations,

drawn to each new and old manifestation of the bloodline

and of the through line of her culture,

time and aging seek to hold her back, 

but will and love are still powerful

in this child of Kentucky

who sings the song of herself with enduring power.

by Henry H. Walker

October 2, ‘26

holding rightness

 

Acadia, and Us

the rocks of Acadia hold against a relentless sea,

hold against gravity's inexorable pull away from the sky,

hold as mountains, hold the land so forests can endure,

the lichens here, like reluctant pioneers,

oh so slowly paint themselves upon the stone, away from the sea,

paths and roads have painted themselves along edge and ridge,

to open the view for us,

today, in early October, thousands of us search for access

to a wholeness, to a beauty, too easy to miss in our regular lives,

21st century America loves our streaming shows,

our phones, our distractions,

but, like empty calories, they do not sustain us,

after seemingly endless scrolling,

we ache to remember the world

into which our species was birthed,

we ache to escape all the self-reflections we make with our tools,

only then can our spirit find its footing,

only then can we remember the best of who we are,

when nature swallows us back into rightness,

the rock holds,

and the natural parks hold, 

the view of ocean, forest, rock, bird,

opens us to what we have too easily lost:

we crave the reconnection.

by Henry H. Walker

October 3, ‘26

attaining the long view

 Present Bias

it is devilishly hard to attain the long view,

Yeats in "Fergus and the Druid,"

describes "great webs of sorrow"

when his understanding touches the long cycles,

when his consciousness experiences long time,

there is a wheel on which we find precarious purchase,

and we can think our moment is not just 

one frame in a full-length movie,

but the moment on which we hang is not a constant

that must be what was and what shall be,

but is more ephemeral than we'd like,

we are now in upper New England,

13,000 years ago a great glacier of ice sat on the land,

when climate changed and ice left,

forests returned and over millennia built up a rich soil,

great trees ruled here,

explorers, then colonists, from across the ocean,

wreaked their will, 

the great forest slaughtered,

trees turned into things,

materials for houses, ships, export,

the land viewed as factory  and used for farms,

the topsoil eroded away, farms turned into pasture for Mavil sheep,

the underlying ubiquitous rocks, called glacial till,

increasingly frost-heaved toward the eroding surface,

as if asking to be made into rock walls,

now most of the rock walls are swallowed by returning forest,

we humans are present-biased,

thinking that is, was, and will be,

reality begs to differ.

by Henry H. Walker

October 2, ‘26

one maple leaf

 the hidden within comes out

one sugar leaf maple leaf pulls my eye to it,

it's as big as a small face,

golden-yellow against smooth grey bark,

it is living a wonderful metaphor

for how one might be in the last days of life,

when no longer producing with one's life,

as the working self drops away,

now can be the time for the hidden to manifest,

the underlying basics to be revealed,

for the leaf a glory within now visible for its last hours,

I want to be like a sugar maple leaf

as winter messages the loss coming,

a last flare before the light dies,

two hours later I return to where I celebrated the leaf,

and it is gone, to the ground,

another lesson to savor while one can.

I found a replacement leaf to call up the memory.

by Henry H. Walker

October 1, ‘26