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

the totality that is here

 

the totality of the harmony

the sky and the land together here,

in the dry heart of the Southwest, are the whole story,

not the few chapters I can read at times back East,

here the ancestral Puebloans could not forget to notice the Heavens,

they could not lose themselves in their fragments of moments,

in moments disjointed from the totality here,

for the whole commands us to notice it, all day and night long,

this is where water is special:

only about 4 inches of rain fall each year,

so plants are subdued

and the sky is accessible and clear enough

for the heavens to show themselves,

these people here had to know the world as a whole, 

for they were swallowed in these truths,

they had to embrace their relationship to the heavens:

the cardinal points burned into them

each time the Sun rose,

each time the Sun set,

each time the Moon and stars came out 

and stately marched across the heavens,

it is as if God needed no messiah to interpret the ambiguous,

for here the universe and our place in it shouts in revelation every day,

the world here keeps us hungry, awake, alive,

ready to release ourselves into awe,

to let our lives resonate with the harmonies

so present everywhere we go

in this world so obviously touched by grace.

by Henry H. Walker

March 10, ‘26

grandfathered by a valley

 

The Trails of the Wind

the Diné know the desert, love the desert,

and Monument Valley, what they call

The Trails of the Wind,

or The Valley of the Rocks,

pulls at their heart and at the heart of anyone

who starts to know it,

for what time, water, wind have created here

with stone and sand,

pulls at any of us who want to walk in beauty,

every step within the valley

can pull at the eyes and open the soul into wonder,

we visit a Navajo woman,

whose mother we visited here 30 years ago,

who still lives the traditional ways,

she shows us of how to take wool

and transform it into yarn,

and then shares example of the yarn woven into rug,

how to color the yarn with native plants,

a green she shows us came from mistletoe,

the natural world providing color and substance,

all her sharing said within a hogan,

roofed by native cedar carefully made into ceiling,

fit together by crafted shape and no metal,

covered by a foot of dirt,

maybe six of the family live here

where risen stone is deafening in the reality of its rightness,

about a hundred feet from her home

ancestral peoples had carved out climbing holes into the smooth rock,

so that the way up and the way down were as one,

their culture, their past, their future, also to be as one,

based on connections with each other,

with the darkness and the seeking light of their past,

our guide is Navajo whose grandfather spoke only Navajo,

never went to any school, but who knew the old songs

and taught them to him,

he who finds his grandfather knew truths

that he only now surprises himself 

with the profundity of their understanding,

truths tradition knew in song and ceremony

and that today's reality seems all too willing to discard,

the shapes, which now thrust toward the sky here, grab us,

I hope they can stay with us long enough

so that we can be as grandchild to grandparents,

and that we learn what can be given

if we will just work to accept it.

by Henry H. Walker

March 11, ‘26