the falcon can hear

as the train, and as not

the heart beats,
once it starts and until it stops
it marks with each point of the beat
the line of a life,
a timeline on which we can notice event follow event,
as if life is a train that follows a track,
all so linear, sequential,
my consciousness jumps that track
like a falcon released from the train:
I fly back along the track
and I can’t believe a time has passed,











my children and grandchildren were just with me
and I cannot feel that I noticed, and appreciated,
each moment with them enough,
for how can I appreciate unless I pull out enough,
then I’m not fully present in the moment I want to know fully:
I listened to them,
I played with them,
I took care to take care,
and I still feel I was asleep
as if each moment was a glance out the window,
pleasant, fleeting, lost in an inexorable unfolding,

now I sob with loss,

my falcon flies hard and fast
toward the time just past
that I wish I could hold again,
I fly toward the time ahead
when I hope to recapture
more such moments of rightness,
that of the past I loved can maybe be again
in a future I can find,









the train still beats along the track,
and I still feel released as the falcon
to find a way to hold the whole length of the track
within the self I can feel myself to be.

by Henry Walker
December 30, ’10