figures don't lie, but . . .

 humans and figures

figures don’t lie,

but the language of their truths

can be hard to figure out,

some of the same people who think

God finds us more special

than trillions of other planets in the universe

can also deny that human actions

can influence and cause climate change,

can we be central to God

and peripheral to the planet?

can the universe view us as central

and the gases from our bodies, our cows, our industry,

not be of any consequence we nee to consider?

are we so important to God

that he will spoil us, indulge us,

never hold us accountable for what we do with our lives?

as George Orwell warned in his cautionary 1984, 

2 + 2 = 4,

reality depends upon us knowing that truth.

by Henry H. Walker

April 20, ‘21

who was the pact with?

 

Low Country, South Carolina

the Low Country is where my Walkers first found purchase on this continent,

they were drawn to where the Salkehatchie and Little Salkehatchie Rivers

snaked through deep maritime woods of pine, live oak, magnolia, and palmetto,

they knew these forests hid rich farmland if somebody

would clear the fields, plant them, cultivate them, harvest them,

too often my ancestors chose to increase their productivity

by enslaving those of color to work transformation upon the land,

to fell and clear the trees,

to uproot the stumps,

to enslave the community within the soil to produce what would sell,

only the domesticated allowed to flourish,

natural diversity sacrificed so that only the favored species thrived,

and they would benefit only those of the favored skin color,

the plow and the hoe the tools

to break the spirit of the land into obeying our wants:

rice, indigo, cotton, peanuts, watermelons,

decades ago I visited a farm where my grandfather was born,

there a finger from the coast reached into the fields

and I heard of the occasional alligator who visited

the summer crop of watermelons there,

I reach to empathize with those relatives who did what they could

to make a living out of this Low Country,

I imagine them as warm, loving, good people

who worked hard to serve their family and their God,

and yet they also went along with the tragic barter

of creating a good life for one’s own family

largely by being a part of slavery, a pact with the Devil,

while I imagine all of their consciousness 

considered they were on the side of the angels.

by Henry H. Walker

April 21, ‘21

a piedmont spring

 

Flowers and Naps

I look up into the treetops

and hundreds of pine cones festoon the green pillars,

 

 

thousands of catkins litter the ground

and pollen coats every surface

subject to the wind’s matchmaking,

the dogwoods flower as do the sugar snap peas in the garden,

and the fringe bush in the front yard,

along New Hope Creek flowers abound:

small buckeye trees, May apple, bluets,

the first laurel, foam flower, wild iris,

and myriad other early season ephemerals,

the forest is fulling with leaf

and holding the Sun in the green of their hearts,

birds and squirrels seem manic in their courting rituals,

I, and our students, are tired,

for we have endured and worked through Fall and Winter,

and the pandemic has added countless straws to our backs,

the ebb and flow of nature contrasts strongly

with how we structure our working lives,

hope burgeons in the forest,

and we are ready for a restorative nap.

by Henry H. Walker

April 16, '21 

 

escaping the prison of our individuality

 what ties can bind?

how can we feel ourselves as community?

how can we bind together?

what is the glue that can bind us together?

how can we find commonality despite our differences?

as a defining reality, 

how can we share the same language of defining story?

now we can choose the source of our information,

the source of our news, by what feels right to us

and reinforces our take on it all,

we are all so different

in what we want to eat,

in what we want to read,

in how we want to experience the world,

it used to be that the news came to us

in shared newspaper and television,

so that we knew what was happening

and a range of possible actions to deal with it,

stories were left out, nuances denied,

but our solution to that problem fragments us,

so many voices come at the collective

that babble replaces shared truth,

and we don’t know which is the prophet from God

and which is the prophet from the Devil,

in America for hundreds of years,

The Bible gave us commonality of story, of parable,

so that we could communicate with a shorthand of allusion.,

The Odyssey performed a similar function,

defining value, worth, gender identity,

what would Moses do? Jesus do? Odysseus or Penelope do?

the common experience of Shakespeare much the same,

now we seek to be free from anything that can channel us

into wrong-headed, parochial systemic thought,

the canon can stultify,

yet its absence and the plethora of choice

makes it hard to share experience and revelation,

I can imagine commonality still pulling us together,

but the steps away from the communal stories

make me fear that the way forward will become even harder,

now we do not share even the same news, the same truths,

so that masks are logical necessities to deal with Covid 19

or tyrannical restrictions on God-given freedom,

is science a liberal conspiracy

or a lens through which hard truth reveals itself?

if we can’t agree on what the news is,

or on what defining stories should be studied in middle school,

our diversities stand out over our commonalities,

how can we escape the prison of our individuality

and gambol in the open air

of what makes us one species?

by Henry H. Walker

April 12, ‘21

poems come to me

 

Where do poems come from?

poems come to me:

sometimes like dreams,

from out of nowhere, it seems,

yet they know me

and shake me out of a daze

to deal with a reality 

that demands I notice it,

often it’s a death, a loss,

sometimes like a shape

just at the edge of the mist around me

that I feel more than see,

when I move toward it,

my eyes pull it forth, recognize it,

and I can hold it with my pen,

a way my self works to understand

where I am and where everything else is,

and how I feel about it all,

often, for a poem, I first ground myself

in the natural world around me,

where every flower and rock and touch of water

can be my center,

and by describing them I find that within myself

that needs to work itself

through my heart and head,

and onto the page,

sometimes poems don’t come to me,

but a photo does,

sometimes I just need a doing,

an action more true to the now than words,

I look at my watch

and see it’s time to go cook supper. . .

the fried chicken was delicious.

by Henry H. Walker  

April 2, ‘21

the artist starts to work

 tentative spring, close to enthusiastic

three months have worked upon the mountains

since I last visited them,

so the transformation of tentative spring

feels like an artist just started to work,

the austere canvas of winter’s sketch

now intricately dabbed with budding color:

the purple extravagance of redbuds,

the white puffs of the “sarvis” on the slopes,

the reds and golds maple and oak start to remember,

the small pointed leaves of the dogwood

are almost to the size of squirrels’ ears,

so oldtimers would say we could plant corn soon,

rain has come through and sat upon the mountains,

the grass and yellow trillium look luxuriant,

and the creek is loud and white, though clear,

for above us, 

root and leaf have been left well enough alone

so they hold the soil,

so they hold against the leveling  toward the sea

water lives in its soul as it laughs in submission

to the call of the totality 

the Earth holes in the universe,

I continue to want to learn 

from the powers that were old

before people came to be,

I love our moral stories,

but I love first the elemental stories

of rock and water, of plant and animal, 

before I get lost in what I see reflected from the water,

I want to see into it, to see before it, beyond it,

how can I be a master

until I finish my apprenticeship?

the next morning we foray up the valleys

where cove hardwood still remembers great trees

with trunks reaching toward the sky

and an interconnected web of community below our feet,

and, between those levels, the ephemerals of early spring

race to flower and seed while the way is open,

before the canopy above returns to capture the Sun,

we feel like we are visiting a preschool

with thousands of flower children laughing 

and enjoying each other and each moment:

yellow and white trillium,

beds of May apple and squirrel corn and fringed phacelia,

foam flowers, miterwort, violets everywhere,

bloodroot just past flower, wild ginger just coming into flower,

all of them so like fairies,

as if just born,

and also ancient beyond our reckoning.

by Henry H. Walker

April 1, ‘21