our granddaughter finds her way

 

creating community

a point is alone,

a line has purpose,

a geometric figure enlarges into meaning,

a web can create community,

I imagine being my granddaughter

and how she is making sense of becoming adult

in a world where the barbarians

have moved past banging at the gate

and have been allowed into power,

she is finding a way forward

to play by the rules that still work,

to build a community of friends,

to develop her own skills of understanding and expression,

she and her university have chosen each other,

and she is ready to move

within the web available to her,

I trust her heart, her sense of self,

her commitment to being true to who she is,

and finding her way forward,

despite how lost it is possible to be,

she will make a difference in the world

and will work to build community,

that blessed community that calls to us

even when we feel lost,

even when we feel despair,

Izzi will find a way,

Izzi will find the ways,

to create within the webs that call to her,

she will be of love and hope

and she will create community

with what is accessible to who she is

and to what she builds with her choices,

even within this broken world we still labor to fix.

by Henry H. Walker

August 6, ‘26

feeling lost in the night

 

Lost In Space

in the night my subconscious manufactures situations

within which I am  lost,

unable to find my car, my way home,

I don't know where I am

in terms of where everything else is,

I am lost and alone

and deeply afraid that I can't find my way back

to where I need to be,

to where I want to be.

by Henry H. Walker

August 6, ‘26

growing into our best?

 enlarging our world

before we are born

we are swallowed in a warm sea,

as one with the universe, 

until birth differentiates us,

and we have to be alone,

born into individuality but not into independence,

we are blessed and cursed with profound dependency,

most times we bond with the mother

for food, for care, for love,

we expand our bonding to whatever parent, adult, sibling

comes into our world, and cares,

we reach out with our eyes,

with our smiles,

and our world grows larger,

action begets action, and creates connection,

we become a valued part of larger wholes

within which we discover relationship

and find ourselves of worth for we are not just alone,

we fit into the whole

of family, neighborhood, the reality of God,

I think our understanding of self

can be deeply expressed by our relationship to others,

to the universe, to how we are contained 

and expressed in a webbing with people and place,

those relationships make us real and defined within space,

I was lucky to grow up with loving parents,

a stable welcoming neighborhood,

and a world that played by rules 

I could understand and learn,

the past important,

the present accepting,

the future hopeful

and accessible to our success,

such optimism is sorely challenged today

as malignant spirits grow beyond control,

the body politic wrenched by the malevolent idea 

of conspiracies against us, dissolving relationship,

 a dissolution that we must resist,

for just following our easy will 

leaves us prey to infantile, wrecking desires.

by Henry H. Walker

August 5, ‘26

from George Fox to oracle

 

of an early student, Jessica Harris

a former student, and good friend,

comes over and visits for an hour and a half,

she tells us of her love for Brooklyn, for New York,

and for the life she has created there,

she lives with gusto,

with an easy calmness to it all:

she has evolved both professional and personal ways of being,

she readily connects with and appreciates other people,

out of whole cloth she has built a commercially viable persona of oracle,

with a wig, and a costume, she gives herself to audiences,

there people type questions,

and she pulls forth answers

that make sense to her and them,

all based on her intuitive grasp 

of how the questions came forth,

plus her reading of the body and spirit of the questioner,

Jessica loves the psychological,

the way the human spirit craves to make sense of it all,

she then ventures a response,

less enigmatic than the Delphic oracle might have given,

and she, and the questioner can both be happy with the telling,

the work entertains, and pay the bills,

in her own personal questions to understand

how to be,

what to do,

she wants to parallel Buddha

in how to meditate,

in how to both embrace this life

and to go beyond it to what is even more real

than our sensations,

all the glue that grabs at us

to stick to our moments,

rather than to transcend them,

thus she seeks the reality that is more real

than the ephemeral of the sweet taste,

of moments we can easily know,

Jessica is happy with herself,

with the choices she has made,

with the joy of following her own heart

into knowing what to do, how to be,

as she gets ready to drive away,

she comments: 

"How Friends School of me to have followed my own leading!

and to have created my own reality,"

it works, because it is real

to who she knows herself to be,

how wonderful that the world, plus her creative work,

allows such a path to be revealed, and followed.

by Henry H. Walker

July 7, ‘26

of Mt. LeConte 34 years ago

 

Veils Part

A rocky overlook called Myrtle Point

At the east end of a smoky mountain named LeConte,

I sit alone as day breaks

Inside a blanket of grey fog

The world soft and warm and closed around me

The covers pulled up so I can't see

Sky or vista or valleys or colors of the rising sun,

I pull into myself and find the way out

To loving this moment, this place for what it is

Not for what I want it to be,

I quake with peace and do not begrudge the mist its day,

I seethe with joy and seek to appreciate the moment

For all that it is worth

For we humans can never know how long

Our moments on Earth will last,

The wind picks up to a rushing roar, taking m breath away

For all at once the valley appears below me

Green trees and heath balds and distance

Sharply real, framed by racing grey mist

That swirls the view away

Only to unveil blue sky and white clouds above

Only to veil it all again,

My pulse quickens, my arms outstretch,

I shiver, I sob, I cry out to the heavens

In joy and awe and fear

And the world outside is revealed again--

Ridge and valley leaping into being

And I am not protected,

I am open to glory too much to hold,

I look downwind into the valley

And watch clear cold air give birth

To slate-grey wisps and billows of cloud

That race up at me, over and through me, and beyond,

For a brief moment even the silver-white

Circle of the sun appears,

I am blessed with spectacle, with a grand command performance

That dwarfs me in its majesty,

The world shrinks into a small island lost in cloud

Then expands in a wrenching moment of inspiration, of illumination,

I shiver from the cold and the glory

From a transcendence that dwarfs my frail body

From a transcendence that pulls me out into greatness.

by Henry H. Walker

August 2, ‘92

For Clarence

Katherine Watson Farmer

 

I recently found this tribute to Katherine Watson Farmer, written maybe 35 years ago.

Farewell, Katherine

Ah, the joy of getting to know another

To touch and be touched

To feel the same pulse

Throb so gently, so deeply in another

And to reach out, every sense tender

To hear the beat that drives every heart

That holds us one in life's sweet dream,

We are each stewards of

A grandness that greens the Earth

And we do well to remember our frailness

As we hold for awhile a bit of God in our souls,

Katherine, you and I shared a place first

A center in the forest, a spell by a creek,

And from that common center

We found encircling thoughts and feelings

That could resonate across a generation--

And we touched, and our families touched,

And we were the better for breaking down

The barriers that sought to wall us separate,

You painted a milkweed pod a bursting

With little seeds tethered to fairy balloons

Ready to launch into tomorrow,

You are gone, seeds you loved and let go

Live on, and I feel I have more to share

From having known and loved you.

Fare well.

by Henry H. Walker

circa 1990