holding rightness

 

Acadia, and Us

the rocks of Acadia hold against a relentless sea,

hold against gravity's inexorable pull away from the sky,

hold as mountains, hold the land so forests can endure,

the lichens here, like reluctant pioneers,

oh so slowly paint themselves upon the stone, away from the sea,

paths and roads have painted themselves along edge and ridge,

to open the view for us,

today, in early October, thousands of us search for access

to a wholeness, to a beauty, too easy to miss in our regular lives,

21st century America loves our streaming shows,

our phones, our distractions,

but, like empty calories, they do not sustain us,

after seemingly endless scrolling,

we ache to remember the world

into which our species was birthed,

we ache to escape all the self-reflections we make with our tools,

only then can our spirit find its footing,

only then can we remember the best of who we are,

when nature swallows us back into rightness,

the rock holds,

and the natural parks hold, 

the view of ocean, forest, rock, bird,

opens us to what we have too easily lost:

we crave the reconnection.

by Henry H. Walker

October 3, ‘26

 Present Bias

it is devilishly hard to attain the long view,

Yeats in "Fergus and the Druid,"

describes "great webs of sorrow"

when his understanding touches the long cycles,

when his consciousness experiences long time,

there is a wheel on which we find precarious purchase,

and we can think our moment is not just 

one frame in a full-length movie,

but the moment on which we hang is not a constant

that must be what was and what shall be,

but is more ephemeral than we'd like,

we are now in upper New England,

13,000 years ago a great glacier of ice sat on the land,

when climate changed and ice left,

forests returned and over millennia built up a rich soil,

great trees ruled here,

explorers, then colonists, from across the ocean,

wreaked their will, 

the great forest slaughtered,

trees turned into things,

materials for houses, ships, export,

the land viewed as factory  and used for farms,

the topsoil eroded away, farms turned into pasture for Mavil sheep,

the underlying ubiquitous rocks, called glacial till,

increasingly frost-heaved toward the eroding surface,

as if asking to be made into rock walls,

now most of the rock walls are swallowed by returning forest,

we humans are present-biased,

thinking that is, was, and will be,

reality begs to differ.

by Henry H. Walker

October 2, ‘26

one maple leaf

 the hidden within comes out

one sugar leaf maple leaf pulls my eye to it,

it's as big as a small face,

golden-yellow against smooth grey bark,

it is living a wonderful metaphor

for how one might be in the last days of life,

when no longer producing with one's life,

as the working self drops away,

now can be the time for the hidden to manifest,

the underlying basics to be revealed,

for the leaf a glory within now visible for its last hours,

I want to be like a sugar maple leaf

as winter messages the loss coming,

a last flare before the light dies,

two hours later I return to where I celebrated the leaf,

and it is gone, to the ground,

another lesson to savor while one can.

I found a replacement leaf to call up the memory.

by Henry H. Walker

October 1, ‘26

blaze against the dying of the light!

 

A Leaf Samhein

the North American continent reaches boldly toward the Arctic,

we travel to the north, close to the latitude of Canada,

where deciduous trees assertively reach skyward

as if in defiance of winter's coming 

when they must sleep a third of the year,

in no part of our country 

do the woods celebrate the passing year

as fully, and as well, as the celebratory colors

tree after tree shouts at the heavens here in the Northeast,

earlier peoples a month from now in the islands off Europe,

lit great fires in celebration? in defiance?

as the dark increasingly impinged on the day,

the Celts called it Samhein (SOW-een),

it feels to me that the trees here in Maine

light the bonfires of their inner selves

and declare which side they're on,

the Dark will come

but the Light inside endures.

by Henry H. Walker

October 1, ‘26

true to "thine own self"

 opening the gift of self

as a teacher at Carolina Friends School for over half a century,

I pride myself on my seeing the students as themselves,

as individuals not defined, restricted by family or societal expectations,

nor even by their own early self-definition,

of who they expected to be,

of who they hoped to be,

but rather, instead, open to what they could find within 

in their celebration of uniqueness,

each tentatively could open the present

that is who they are,

each could then find and use a true mirror

that confirms that each is on the right path forward,

and commit to trust and celebrate their individuality,

plus all the bonds of friends, each on their own similar journeys,

yesterday I savored watching four former students

who have found themselves as musicians,

who have found their way forward,

truly, and with joy,

what a gift to the current students

for three of them to share their music and selves in classes

the day after the performance,

helping inspire each student 

to continue on their own journeys.

by Henry Walker

September 28, 2026