"day and night, half and half"

 

Spring Equinox, '26

just a week ago we were 

in the overarching black night of Dark Sky country,

now back East, the early morning sky is a bluish wash,

a few stars glinting as if subtle ornaments on a light blanket,

birds increasingly pipe up as if 

they're a crowd ready for a show to start,

the world starts to remember color,

branches articulate against the sky,

shapes of chairs and a red wheelbarrow emerge

from out of the forgetfulness night has washed over us,

the sky, it turns out, is hazed with clouds

who slowly awaken into peach,

the dogwood is sharp lines capped with terminal buds,

the oaks are getting going into leaf,

some filling out more than others,

starting to blur sharp lines with soft billows,

a nearby rooster tells us all to get going, so I do, 

I take vegetables, some of the turkey I cooked,

and the last of the pie dough,

and make and freeze two turkey pies for the future,

redbuds are luxuriant in their reddish-purple,

yesterday morning the last freeze for a while, I hope,

tempered my plans, but the 15 tomatoes I started from seed six weeks ago

are getting leggy so I planted them yesterday,

watered them well, and today supported them with buoying dry leaves,

I watered the first and second plantings of buttercrunch lettuce,

and the first and second plantings of sugar snap peas,

today, at my old school, is for grandparents and grand friends,

the tradition I started and maintained for decades

of celebrating the Spring Equinox at noon

while chanting: "Equi, Equi, Equinox,

day and night, half and half,"

and giving all who wanted a half chocolate, half vanilla cookie,

such a time is no longer celebrated 

for those who own that school world now

are not driven to follow this old way,

at Chaco Canyon today the left two rocks express

a dagger of light onto the small left-hand spiral,

which they're done for a thousand years,

whether anyone notices, or cares,

today is the Spring Equinox, the first day of Spring,

and that reality, for many of us,

does not compete with basketball and March Madness,

let alone the personal stories

of staff, student, and their larger families,

I still, though, want to subsume myself into the celestial today,

the way Sun and Earth react to each other,

the way Father Sky and Mother Earth work together,

as we plant, tend, and harvest as best we can,

both literally and figuratively,

we should acknowledge and celebrate

the grand turnings that allow us to be,

I want to remember and honor

what the ancestral Puebloans worked so hard

to see, to acknowledge, and appreciate,

for truth is not just what we see in the mirror.

by Henry H. Walker

March 20, ‘26

back to the Southeast

 

the stories we live

we return to the Southeast from the Southwest:

we went to where the structure of the story was revealed,

what rock, sun, wind outline of the reality

that characters, situations, and conflict establish, 

while back here in the Southeast

subtlety and nuance add complexity to the Cliff's Notes basics:

forests of trees erupt from the earth

and create chapter after chapter of overarching consequence,

here ubiquitous plants are empowered

to be, to flower, to take what sun and rain give,

to let themselves develop their subplots of the continuing story,

subplots that still exist out West

but are far more subtle in their telling than in the East,

birds, in both areas, are many, and varied,

near me now a pileated woodpecker keeps asserting its moments,

as the sky releases a light, brief shower,

later six turkey cultures glide gracefully overhead,

surfing the power of rain squall wind,

our garden nudges me to plant for spring, summer, fall,

the story back East is fundamentally the same as in the Southwest,

life is, the underlying structure of life upon the world, is,

I love both the short and the long version

of the story the Earth allows us to live,

the story the Earth challenges us

to read, to watch, to appreciate,

while we still have the ability to notice

the driving power of the tales before us and with us,

as we are both audience and bit actors

for what writes itself upon the stage before us.

by Henry H. Walker

March 16, ‘26

climbing to the truth of rock images

 

a conversation of rock images with gods

today for me was of effort and wonder,

of fear and perseverance,

of getting out of my comfort zone

and into surprise at what I can still do,

after the easy fluidity of moving across rough landscape has abandoned me,

my body and will persist enough to get me 

where ancient peoples expressed themselves with finely carved images

of both recognizable shapes and with shapes off enough from the regular

to intrigue our minds and lead us into speculation

with as much of ourselves as we can muster,

how much did the people who stood here long years ago

work to speak clearly with their rock language and to whom?

the voice of their images will speaks with power,

what the voices say riddles us into appreciative wonder,

and I also feel I might be listening into a conversation

between those long-gone writers and their gods,

we spy a gorgeous feather and a carefully-created bundle

at the base of one panel of petroglyphs,

and we wonder if a contemporary hears the images as prayer,

and adds their offering, for they, too,

seek to connect with the divine,

and find themselves within  this primal conversation,

I thank my stars that, for now,

I can work to hear the Spirit  behind it all,

within the gusting wind and

within the images frozen upon the rock.

by Henry H. Walker

March 12, ‘26