our huge backyard

 a bobcat ambassador

just got a text from the caretaker at our Gatlinburg cabin:

"Opened the door to see a young skinny bobcat 

trotting along the treeline back to the trail."

my dad used to say that out our backdoor

we have over half a million acres in our backyard,

valley and mountain slowly return toward old growth,

two sides of our land border the national park,

on one side, a former cornfield a hundred years ago, then pine woods,

now maturing toward the richness of cove hardwood,

from which a rich diversity of fauna can appear,

on another side,  right by the edge of LeConte Creek,

the water draws the eye and the ear and the soul toward harmony,

black bear often cross over from their world into ours here,

a few times I have seen foxes visit and claim this territory,

I've heard of river otters visiting the creek,

and I have savored great blue heron checking out

what its waters can feed them,

we love our windows and our screened porch,

through which birds and bears 

and rhododendron flower

can visit our eyes,

through which the clear mountain creek entices us

to get lost in its magnificence 

and be soothed by its murmuring voice,

countless times: "Is it raining?" 

"No, it's the creek,"

we can walk out our door and pass through a green veil

into a natural world from which we came,

and into which we return when we act upon our need

for what Wendell Berry would describe as 

"the peace of wild things,"

borders intrigue us, frontiers,

where one world intersects with another,

the beach must be that for many,

the edge where comfort and control meet the ocean,

where what it reveals

is but an appetizer for what is within it,

perhaps the skinny bobcat is an unconscious ambassador

who doesn't want to interact with us, to know us,

but, like the bears, can put up with us near its world,

where it can still be who it is,

despite how alien our worlds can be to it,

if our yards can produce a meal of squirrel,

it will chance putting up with cultural contagion

for the hope of a good meal,

less hard won than in the national park.

by Henry H. Walker

September 8, ‘26

impulse and excess

 

freedom and responsibility

freedom can be a wonderful reality

within which to move,

the individual empowered to follow first impulse,

without any governor restricting desire,

freedom can thus be to soar above it all,

without limits, the "imaginary lines" that Whitman described,

that seek to keep a person from being one's "own master,"

yet in our world we are connected to that larger than us,

we can be constrained by what is right,

by other people, and creatures, and realities,

who add their voices to our inner direction,

real lines that should softly, but firmly, hold us,

in decision-making that is beyond our first impulse,

somehow we need to find a way forward

that both honors our freedom and restricts our excess,

the story of Genesis describes God's gift of free will,

and also the harsh result of indulging self

in defiance of obedience to a defining divine rule,

we mature into understanding

as we learn consequence for our actions,

an Indigenous prayer I invoke often

counsels us to both live the freedom of the eagle,

soaring in the sky,

and to also live the limitation of the ant,

which crawls on the ground,

freedom, at its best, should be tempered away from excess,

we can then live with balance, and thus with wisdom.

by Henry H. Walker

August 31, ‘26

The Greek in us

 

messages of the movie

Christopher Nolan must have felt called 

to the defining story of The Odyssey,

we of the West trace the essence of who we are back to the Greeks,

and this story sings of those beginnings,

at its worst it sings of male dominance and violence,

the misogyny and arrogance that Agamemnon preaches,

he who had no problem sacrificing his female child

for good sailing wind, to get him to the battle,

he was shocked at being killed by the mother of the murdered child,

in his world Zeus disempowers nearly all of the Earth Goddesses

to whom the Greeks prayed before the new power structure,

in this new world, economic greed is at the heart of most of our wars,

imperialist Rome the model for how to treat other cultures,

to consider them to be as fodder for the beasts

of our selfish assertion of will:

pillage, rape, the sacrifice of our soldiers,

the price we pay for how clever we are,

how good we are at asserting our selves upon the world,

as Troy is being sacked, we are forced 

to notice the heavy price being paid

as we are one with the revelatory shock Odysseus feels,

Nolan knows that we need 

to revisit this founding story,

to look at our past,

to look at our present,

to look at the future that calls to us,

and figure a better response 

than keeping to the same path,

it is easy to quibble 

about how he might have made 

different choices with the movie:

of cast, of costume, of language,

of what to include,

of what to exclude,

instead it is far better to intensely watch the movie,

as I did for a second time this week,

and to consider the message emblazoned in every frame:

that the Odysseus within us

should know the price of our arrogant willfulness,

of our submissive yielding to a tyrant as leader,

instead we should do what is right

for the sake of those who gave their lives

so that we can be where we are now,

Nolan's film argues that the way 

we treat visitors, the way we treat those different,

is key for us to be ourselves at our best,

we need to be saved from the consequences of our insularity,

of our dependence on a dominating father figure,

of reverting to identity solely through the tribe,

Nolan hopes that we will 

wake up from the Olympian dream,

and create a future 

that is far more inclusive, transcendent,

than what the lesser within us keeps choosing,

how ironic that one of the great gifts from the Greek uplift of culture

is the understanding that we are not stuck in cycles of history,

that we can overcome adversity,

the Greek in Nolan reminds us 

that we can find a better way forward.

by Henry H. Walker

September 2, ‘26

who I am, with gusto

 

new paradigms

retirement first feels of absence,

the laying down of work,

a laying down of a self-definition

that requires self-worth to result from one's career,

the presence of other ways of doing, of other ways of being,

can take a bit of time to find and accept,

new paradigms need to be constructed,

the new school year is just starting,

and I am no longer part of it,

relationships, photos, no longer my charge,

when I began my journey as a teacher,

I wrote that the goal of a teacher is to make yourself dispensable,

that if you help the learner enough,

they will assume responsibility and supervise their own learning,

their education within their own control,

I am working to feel something like that now,

that the vital work of creating and maintaining a middle school

is well in control with the staff there, without me,

maybe now my charge is to let go

and trust in the next generations 

to continue the tradition of Friends School,

to help every student and staff 

come into the power that is their birthright,

I want to spend the time I have left

on whatever calls to me now,

whatever connections to support,

whatever order to assert:

whether in house, or yard, or garden, or internally,

as in the writing that still calls strongly to me,

to think the good thought,

to assert myself with actions and words,

like with this poem,

to use my now near eight decades

of experience, of thought, of love,

to make a difference for the good,

in this world I dearly love,

I can still live for the good,

for nature,

for myself,

for the future,

and for the past,

I can figure who I am with gusto. 

by Henry H. Walker

August 29, ‘26