The Day After

 to be as one

it is now the day after,

and all across the country

voters have overwhelmingly spoken:

our country is not for sale,

our Christianity is of love, not hate,

each of us is equal in the sight of God,

equal in deserving a good wage, a good home,

basic resources, to be treated with dignity,

great divisions still exist,

those who lost are also that of God,

the difference between winning and losing

is just one out of ten, often even less,

somehow we must learn to be as one,

no matter the differences,

God loves all of us,

we should rise to do the same.

by Henry H. Walker

November 4, ‘26

Election Day

who makes decisions?

I love sports, though I hate to lose,

some people I know have recently lost themselves in sports

since the stakes in politics are so high, and  mean so much,

so why not obsess on how sports teams

perform in relation to other teams?

sports matter, but they matter more symbolically 

than in the concrete realities of day-to-day life,

troubles that increasingly weigh heavily on us,

plus the psychic weight of burgeoning hate and corruption in the country,

today our country completes the voting

as to who will represent us in Congress, in our states,

our system is so broken

that billionaires are free to do their best

to buy seats that will be agents for their personal financial gain,

the relative few who are exceptionally gifted with financial success

are treated as more important than we common people,

 the great mass of us are treated as if we are serfs

who labor only so that those who lord over us in the castle

can indulge their fantasies of control, hedonism,

of making a world where their genes triumph,

some of my wife's ancestors worked hard in their lives

to make sure The Bible was translated 

into a language accessible to everybody,

available as much to the ploughman 

as to the aristocrat,

for such blasphemy against the structures of power,

John Rogers was burned at the stake,

I hope today we reclaim decision-making in the country

from the elites who believe in themselves

far more than believing that everyone is a child of God,

equally deserving of power

and in finding a place in the sun.

by Henry H. Walker

November 3, ‘26

noticing the season

 

Fall and Me

for most of my life

fall has been a a time for school:

 for being a student

for being a teacher,

with the outside world as a backdrop,

not a main actor in the play of my life,

now that my energies are less circumscribed,

I work to notice, to appreciate,

to watch whatever forests I can find,

as each anticipates, and prepares for, 

the consequences of water's phase change,

when liquid can morph into solid

and threaten life's ability to endure,

evergreens long ago chose to give up

some efficiency in the summer

for enduring through the winter,

the Cherokee particularly respected the spruce and the fir, 

the rhododendron and the laurel,

and their cousins down in the valleys,

they who kept photosynthesis going,

their Indigenous wisdom found power in staying awake,

for both animal and plant,

deciduous trees withdraw their blood from the leaves

and recycle the substance in them

to enrich the ground below,

the soil can then better help future growth,

there is power in their withdrawal 

into ground and root to await the Spring,

I have read that the Cherokee saw trees as "standing people,"

that deciduous trees remind us of humility,

of the need for rest and rejuvenation,

and that they, like all other plants, are allies to humans,

for me that one to two months of transition 

from summer to winter realities

is the stuff of transcendent joy,

every leaf that drops its green 

can reveal the flare of its inner color

and deserves a shout for how impressive it is,

even one tree, one leaf, can pull my heart into awe,

and pull us to want to find a way forward 

to share what we see, what we feel

of the beauty a moment can hold and release,

this fall the outside beauty has often

stopped me in my tracks,

and released tears of joy from my eyes

at the incredible reality of the woods before me,

how appropriate that we name and celebrate a time

that usually follows the show, Thanksgiving,

celebrating the bounty of the year,

and our still being here with people we care about,

and with a world that offers wonder as the year declines,

the dark, the grey, the clouds, the withdrawal into sleep, are coming,

for now I want to celebrate life,

and the blaze of its magnificence,

I go back out into the woods:

the wind blows,

the sun shines,

golden leaves from a red maple flow around me like confetti.

by Henry H. Walker

October 29, ‘26