Paul Brown, and the grandchildren

 A Celebration of Paul Brown’s Life

a person can be with us,

and then, suddenly, they’re not,

we ache to remember them truly, fully,

we ache to have them still with us,

we ache for the goodbyes not said,

for the wisdom we won’t hear anew, again,

for the times spent together

that have helped make us who we are

and could make who we are even better

if they were still with us,

I miss the light of those we have lost

for how they helped us and themselves 

deal with the darknesses within,

today about sixty of us gathered in a Durham park

to remember and celebrate Paul Brown,

a dear man who well used the light of his life 

with those who were hurting,

particularly those hurting through no fault of their own,

his job and calling to minister in hospital and outreach facility

to those hurting and dealing with the bad hands they were dealt,

their psychological struggles so like a broken bone,

not defining who they are, rather describing what they have to deal with,

Paul’s love of family shouted in our time together today:

his devotion to parent, to grandparent,

to his two children whose broken hearts

released a love that shone fiercely on his life,

and revealed a father devoted to whomever

his son and daughter found the way to be,

and, most clear to me today, to his four grandchildren

who know and live his unconditional love for them,

and whose broken hearts released poetry and tears,

and a resurgent joy as they can still feel Paul’s love for them

surrounding them like a bright sun,

they still know his love

and live their lives to be the wonders that Paul saw,

Paul’s child quoted him, 

at a time when they were complaining

of “having to do” something:

“All you have to do is die.  Everything else is a choice.”

unfortunately, Paul’s number was called,

and he had to die,

how wondrous are all the right choices 

he made while alive.

by Henry H. Walker

August 22, ‘20

The Loss of Fili

 Fili

I remember Fili’s quiet intense eyes,

I remember his willingness to take a risk,

despite the caution he felt toward the world,

the shyness that held him back

from letting us know too much,

I remember his soft smile,

the loving patience he worked to give the world

and to those of us he cared about,

but who he hesitated to let in too far as to who he was,

I remember his diligence and persistence 

in mastering English as a second language,

I remember how he persevered so well in learning 

that college called him and he accepted,

when he was an eighth grader,

readying himself for high school,

I worked with him as he worked

to tell his story on the computer, 

with illustrating pictures,

of how he got to be here,

of his roots in VeraCruz, Mexico,

of his roots in the vitality of family to him,

I was impressed with his gentle soul,

with the strength of self he lived,

with the goodness of his heart,

with the wondrous possibilities that could be before him,

then his story abruptly, tragically, 

came to an end in the moments we know,

his soul, though beyond us now,

must soar as he returns to God.

by Henry H. Walker

July 24, ‘20

set, and subset

 

August and Albright Nature Grove

as summer starts to wind down

and the flatter lands call me back to work,

I like to have an adventure

up here in these Smoky Mountains,

a goodbye to the teacher called mountains

to whom I regularly apprentice myself,

today is 7 miles of climbing up and down a valley:

first on a gravel road

where those settling these lower reaches of the slopes

coaxed plants to give them corn, sweet potatoes, apples,

where chestnut trees showered sweet nuts upon them,

and allowed their wood to be shaped into house and barn,

a wood ready to be worked and resistant to rotting away,

that world of the settler is gone,

and the cove hardwood forest aches to return,

for 90 years the trees, without help from us,

have been reaching back to the sky,

and slowly, steadily recreating the world that thrived here

since the Great Ice retreated some ten millennia ago,

for reasons all too rare in these Southern Appalachians

a section of this upper valley was spared the “clear cut,”

and enough old growth trees were allowed to remain

so that we, in our visit,

can see a ghost of what was,

when the forest, without humans,

created a world where the wolf knew it was home,

where the bison and the elk,

of countless other species, of fauna and flora

lived and thrived together in a harmony

we humans cannot even achieve just with our own kind,

we humans have had the vision

to set aside some spaces

from the destructive scouring

of reducing what is not “us,”

to what “we” want,

our challenge is to realize

that “we” includes the wolves, the trees,

and all the species that are part of the family of life,

we cannot live if we do not act upon the reality

that there is a set called life,

and that we are at best a subset of it,

which knows its place, and uses it well.

by Henry H. Walker

August 8, ‘20

change washes over us

the Zoom world

the Zoom world makes us all as if on the Spectrum:

the social cues of meeting the others’ eyes,

of nodding when in agreement,

of searching the faces before us

for how they’re reacting,

what they’re feeling

easy to deny,

when I have an hour or two meeting before me,

I have felt the temptation to get e mail done,

to maybe even read a book while nothing much might be going on,

how tempting a video game must be to our kids,

all of us are challenged

by how differently the world now washes over us,

the better angels within me

know that we an speak in these new languages,

we just have to realize the universality

within who we are,

within our dreams, our hopes, our fears,

and dare to move forward and trust 

that tomorrow, and today, and yesterday,

are still connected,

and accessible to our hearts

and to the effort of our work.

by Henry H. Walker

August 7, ‘20

the world, animated by spirit

the bison still there

we have a mountain bulwark up the creek from us,

over a mile of east-west upthrust,

who rises over a mile from the start of its base,

which is just down the road from us,

the Cherokee called it Walisiyi

for a great frog once found here, 

whose memory lingers 

when you see the mountain from a distance,

today we hiked halfway to the summit

to a gap, graced with a stone table,

the Cherokee called this side of the mountain, Bullhead,

for the bison bull,

the great hump of the shoulders, 

the crew-cut head,

the shape not just hinting at the spirit of the animal,

but rather shouting that that animal and that that mountain are one,

we hike hard and steep from the valley below

and savor views on the drier ridges

where the Great Fire four years ago

scoured away blocking trees

and burned the lichen off the stone, white rocking it,

now countless trees, particularly table mountain pine, 

assault the sky

to have their turn 

at foresting the bull’s head,

each step up the mountain a victory of effort and care,

and I donated pounds of my sweat

in my body’s attempt to throw off the waste of my heat,

valleys and mountains scatter out from us,

as if sown by a power we cannot truly know,

that same power flowers the trail 

yellow, and orange, and blue:

coreopsis, yellow-fringed orchis, 

southern hare-bell, smooth gerardia,

we take our time to walk the gap and ridge line,

and to strain to reach toward 

how the first people saw and understood this world,

what their “Thou” was to their “I,”

I worry about how much we now 

see the world as machine, lifeless,

while today I feel for the world as animated by spirit,

the bison still alive as the mountain.

by Henry H. Walker

August 4, ‘20

November, 2016

political and climate change

November, 2016, started off with a spasm of disgust

by a U.S. electorate fed up with incompetence in Washington

and fueled with the hope that a wealthy businessman,

whose talk and action were as common as Andrew Jackson,

could clean up the swamp

where a government run by the greed of corporations

and the wealthy 1%, 

make decisions that leave out the many,

those false prophets who feel their worth

to be only better if they hog 

more and more of the pie for themselves,

instead of Robin Hood, 

we elected the Sheriff of Nottingham,

who actually delighted in the swamp

where his self-interested gluttony

was the only value he ever acted on,

November, 2016, ended with the Great Fire in the Smokies,

where the self-centered greed of the fossil fuel industry

stoked climate change into debilitating drought,

the spark of a fire set by thoughtless teenagers on a popular trail,

then fanned into inferno by the high winds

climate change can also bring,

the Great Fire almost took our cabin in the Smokies

and did take homes and lives and businesses

in its mindless roar so like the electorate weeks before,

we humans have the gift to be self-aware

and to be able to rise above the narrowest parochial self,

to grasp at what the whole needs,

the whole of people, of place,

of what life itself works to create

with the gift of our days 

and the world that allows us

to breathe, to know, to feel, to do.

by Henry H. Walker

August 1, ‘20