up along Ramsey Prong
we choose this hike for an hour of aerobics up,
huge rocks dominate the steepest section of the old road,
the stream drops hard and fast,
and we climb up and up,
how wonderful that heart and lung and knees,
and choice,
still allow us such a journey up.
clarity over greyness
there is a leaden greyness to these days,
as if the clouds don’t know their place
and settle down on us,
leaking drizzle to sodden the world,
I wonder how much energy rhododendron leaves
can make and store in the shorter days
since the oaks and friends have dropped their canopy
and allowed sky to be visible from the ground,
when the air is heavy with water
individual lines blur into each other
as if a impressionist burred grey over every distinction,
the morning after such a drizzled day
the air no longer is like a fogging lens,
instead each rock, each log, each leaf, is its own self,
the air forgets to assert itself
so that the world and eye have no barrier,
and I feel as new as each view feels to me.
Winter Solstice ‘21
the natural world slows down,
the day breaks chilly, the air heavy,
the Sun only a hint behind clouds
gray as shaved pencil lead,
not even the squirrels are about
yesterday a lone coyote loped up the trail across the creek,
looking like he felt he was late to be somewhere,
the bears are away in their dens,
and the creek minds its own business,
the television is full of frenetic news:
the latest chapters of the pandemic,
political squabbles,
messes that need to be cleaned up,
too many mistakes made too often,
the Sun doesn’t care as the wobble of the Earth
will start soon to allow the Sun to rise higher in the sky
and allow a new growing season in a few months,
for an hour or so the Sun breaks through the clouds
enough to remind us, and it, that it will return,
as dusk settles over this gray day,
family joins us with the brightness of their spirit,
the evening a-glow with rightness revisited,
overnight the sky clears and the fulling Moon
reminds us, and it, that the way up and the way down
still is real, even when the day is smudged.
continuity of self
for over 16 years
I have worked to see our grandchildren,
at each stage of their development,
to see and understand how who they are
allows for their development as they
deal with the challenge and opportunities,
the tools available to them,
and the skills possible for them,
who we are, at our heart,
somehow is us from the beginning,
how that self gets out into the world
and refines its self-definition
is the serial story that should captivate us,
every one of us is unique,
every journey is unique,
yet every one of us undertakes the same journey
to find ourselves anew within the commonality,
I watch, I love, I write, I rewrite,
and now I self-publish the tales of the journeys
I’ve seen and chronicled,
I tell my middle school students
to share themselves in their writing,
that somehow the more particular,
the more individual, the more personal,
the more universal,
may it be so with the book I publish and share.
Mother, Alzheimers, and Continuity
I contend that my mother was always still there,
despite the washed-out roads,
despite the downed power lines,
of Alzheimer’s subtractions,
which would dig a chasm
between her and the rest of the world,
we tend to feel that we must be in touch,
that who each of us is needs the other
to know us in the moment for each of us to exist,
and I feel that is not true,
each year disempowered Mother,
each day, each turn of the wheel,
disempowered Mother,
yet I still saw her, knew her, celebrated her,
despite how her body shrank,
despite how her mind could not find the paths out to us,
despite how she could not see us
on the paths we ventured toward her,
during that time, I chronicled the wholeness
of the mother, of the grandmother,
of the one who still loved all she could know,
despite it all, I felt a continuity of self
a self who sloughed off the bindings
which came to her throughout her life,
but the bindings did not define her,
words and actions were no longer
within her repertoire,
her soul was ready,
her goodness and love returned
to the Source.
The Winter Dance Concert ‘21
in my heart I am a dancer,
it’s my body that doesn’t quite fit the dream,
I love to move in harmony with purpose, with control,
in harmony with music,
this week I have again found myself
in awe of our upper schoolers
in their Winter Dance Concert,
each of the dancers a choreographer, too,
their bodies the tools,
their heads, their hearts, their souls:
create, adapt, live the dances,
the music, the songs, chosen and crafted
for movement, word, and beat to unite,
technology of lights, of sound, of space,
all a stage within which movement
creates its own life for a time,
usually, my universe is of words,
those verbal tools that allow me
to think, to express feeling,
I love the alternative of the language of dance,
combined with the language of music,
as what is “said” moves on profoundly deep levels,
the Upper School students create before us,
and the world is better for their venturing forth.
by Henry H. Walker
December 8, ‘21
over the mountain
260 years ago, or so, great powers conflicted
here west of the Appalachians,
the Cherokee and the land felt as one,
and Britain supported their claim,
the richness of the land
drew farmers to settle across the mountains,
to carve up potential into homesteads, into farms, into settlements,
wresting the land from the indigenous Cherokee, and their British allies,
justice involved fields of corn, fences, and stockades
for one’s own community, ownership zero-sum,
fate in one’s own hands,
that plucky feistiness turned the war for independence from England,
as thousands of men, committed to the settling west of the Appalachians,
crossed the mountains back to the east
and beat the English at King’s Mountain,
opportunity of land to be claimed and developed won the war,
and we are still dealing with the downside
of claiming one’s own freedoms primary
while neglecting consequences when will becomes one’s god.
who is driving?
how can we know who we are?
I wonder how much we are programmed
by our genes, by our raising,
by the consequences of our choices,
I want to be as conscious as I can of the legacies
that have a share in the driving of my life,
parents and siblings certainly affect my hold on the steering wheel,
I also attempt empathic leaps
into the hopes, dreams, compromises of my ancestors,
I struggle to understand
my great-grandfather, his parents, his grandparents,
who must have been wonderful to family and friends
and who still found enslaving others to be part of their life,
further back, on another side of my family,
the Spirit drove them to forsake England
and to come to New England
to purify Church and themselves,
and woe to any who disagreed,
and who thus were not of God but of Satan,
I hear them echo in today’s divisions,
I choose a faith that expands the in-group
there is too much darkness,
we need the Light within everyone
to shine forth and help us find our way.
Becca Calhoun’s Service
as the service progresses,
I keep seeing the young Becky Calhoun:
eyes a-twinkle, seeing you
and the potential in the moment,
feeling the Light within
and the joy of letting it out into the world,
as friend after friend describe her last years,
I feel a continuity of the self revealed in their words
with that early promise I still feel so clearly,
what shakes me to my core, though,
are those memories of in-between,
when winds buffeted her,
glitches in her body,
of cancer and Lyme disease,
glitches in her choices
when the way forward
was lost to her for awhile,
I feel comfort in the continuity
of the last years with the promise of her first years,
Becca made a difference for the better in life after life,
her Light within still brings revelation
of how to move forward,
even when the paths hide
and the steps are powerfully hard to take.
by Henry H. Walker
December 4, ‘21
