stories all around me

 

drawn to the story

humans are creatures of the story,

something in us loves the connectivity

that the sequential can give to how random the world can feel,

the story has cause and effect, characters, conflict,

the story gives understandability to the randomness

which can seem to swallow away our sureness,

and make us fearful that nothing means anything,

that we are but flotsam and jetsam,

as we travel across the Southwest

I feel like  a kid just before Christmas,

for I see the stories all around me, waiting to be read,

in the rock, in the plants,

in the history of the people who have lived here,

we seem to know the stories of those like us now:

looking into the mirror diverts but doesn't touch deeply,

I feel much more interest in the stories

of how the land came to be this way,

the assertive power of Shiprock,

the sedimentary segmentations that manifest

into shocking beauty before us,

the way the world tell us of how the land came to be this way,

and of how the peoples before now knew what was,

and hoped what should be.

by Henry H. Walker

March 9, ‘26