Rachel is in Nepal

 finding the different to be delicious

The phone asserts itself 

with a new app, WhatsApp,

allowing our granddaughter to easily touch us

from the other side of the world,

from Nepal, where she is walking home after classes,

she is there, in Katmandu, to experience, and learn

how the people there have built their lives on what manifests

from their history, from their choices, from each other,

the details of daily life

move me more than these words can express,

I am undone by descriptions of the food,

the lentils, and the rice,

forming the foundation of the meal,

the seasonings, the spices, the sides:

delicious, and different,

Even deeper to her immersion 

is the reality of her new family and friends

and what she can be learning of how others are themselves,

just as she can be when she figures even more how her self 

can unlock into expansion and redefinition,

how wonderful that our granddaughter 

finds the different to be delicious, and not off-putting,

she gets the reality that too many Americans 

seem to fear, to deny, to run away from,

somehow we should find commonality in our differences,

by embracing even those a world away 

from who we are,

from who we have been,

and reach true to who we can be.

by Henry H. Walker

August 20, '25

dealing with death

 

on dealing with it all

a favorite cousin of ours challenged us

with his seemingly casual comment,

I told him of being in a car with close relatives of my wife's,

I felt it was time to deal with the funeral and life of a well-loved cousin,

I was surprised when the conversation focused on sports,

not on the extraordinary life of Paul Holman,

I wanted to focus on the person who has left us

and whose body we were interring,

our cousin shared the wisdom of his take on it all:

"These folks have been avoiding talking about death their whole lives. . . "

how sad that our culture has so much trouble

growing up enough to see and honor

the harshness of this reality.

by Henry H. Walker

August 12, '25

a mountain beyond any name

 Walisiyi?

names have power,

for the thing, the person, has a reality

that can partly be shaped by what we call it,

we often call our cities a name from our past, from its past,

and we can hear some of the history of its story in its name,

these days many of us seek to escape

from the tyranny of the worst of who we were,

such as Confederate "heroes" attached to military bases,

mountains who honor dead white men 

who had nothing to do with the mountain,

men whose lives were questionable, 

if not despicable, as to their choices,

there is a singular mountain in East Tennessee

whose physical reality dominates the area around it:

it runs over a mile east-west, stands over a mile high,

the hikes up and down it wonderful for the body and for the soul,

a lodge on top with nurturing food, drink, beds, camaraderie,

promontories of rock at each end where all of those present 

can welcome the glory of the new day's sun in the morning,

and celebrate the glory of the day that is passing at dusk,

now it is named Mt. LeConte, a lovely name, very French,

very not chosen to honor the mountain itself,

instead it honors a scientist who probably never even saw it,

I contend that we should call it Walisiyi, what the Cherokee called it,

those Indigenous people who lived near it for far longer than we have,

a perfect name for it is beyond us,

no words I yet know can hold its glory,

its scale, the beauty of its flora, fauna, geology, reality,

the revelations of who we are 

that we can find in hikes up and down it,

in sunset and sunrise from its top,

from our feeling eldered by how much it is beyond us,

and also by how much it is so completely with us,

and we with it.

by Henry H. Walker

August 11, ‘25

a school comes into being

 

for Peter and Martha Klopfer

out of their love for each other,

parents can bring forth children into a world

that may not fit the needs of those children,

two parents I know looked at a world of segregation, of prejudice,

of schools set up on the paradigm of the assembly line,

set up for the convenience of ignoring the individual and the possible,

and settling for the tried and yet not true,

so these two parents found companions in the pursuit of a way forward

for a new school that in fits and starts found its way into being,

these parents sought to recreate a world

that could fit the needs of their own children

and thus they helped create a school that has helped

thousands of other students and families

come into the power that should be everyone's birthright,

all of us have a humanity not restricted by race, gender, economic class,

yet instead based on the realization that a love for learning,

and common sense, should dominate a school,

that each of us has that of God within us,

that each of us has a special gift that needs to be expressed,

that each of us has a need to serve others with our gifts,

and that everyone has a piece of the truth,

what a wondrous reality that the love of one's own children

can express a love for all children,

and a school comes into being: inclusive,

vibrantly built upon love for each, and love for all.

by Henry H. Walker

August 4, ‘25

pictures halt time

 

to crave to be remembered

how can you hold a moment in time?

does not the very act of trying change the moment?

I remember bristling, as a kid,

when my aunt wanted to stop everything for a picture,

I changed later and realized the loss in the present

led to a gain in the future,

for decades catching moments in photos has been important to me,

letting the person, the event, the beauty within the moment

achingly hope to be held with the pictures I snap,

for me poetry is also a way to strive to hold the moment,

as I sit here now I make lists of what to do,

action more vital at this moment than contemplative musings,

the present, the past, the future, combine in a "to do" list,

my photos and my writing are ways to hold 

some of the depth, the breadth, the reality 

that every moment holds within itself,

moments that crave to be remembered.

by Henry H. Walker

July 22, ‘25