how much in this moment

 the moment: interior vs exterior

decades ago, I remember getting up here to the Smokies

after a light snow had created its magic in the woods,

I brought with me our need to buy a car

in the midst of excessive natural beauty,

my mind whirled with calculations

of how much we might be able to pay a month

for necessary transportation,

once I led a group of middle schoolers

to a gorgeous cascading waterfall, Ramsey Cascades,

and I asked them to write

what was working on their spirt there

many had an "I-thou" relationship with the glory of where they were,

one girl wrote of the tempest of a friendship,

I am sitting by the creek below our cabin

the most grounding place I know,

and while I am here, I am also two and a half days ago

when my wife fell before me soundlessly in the night,

and I became lost inside, catapulted to a worst case scenario,

of surely losing her,  she who grounds me,

even more than this pastoral pol in the creek,

after doctors and nurses observed and tested her, time after time,

they released her, and allowed her to drive some on the way back up here,

I sit amidst rock and stream,

by a beech who lives its own life 

on a scale, and with a depth, I can barely touch,

I want to be here and laugh with the stream,

endure with the beech,

and still I am now with an anxiety

that is personal

and easily crosses over into despair,

as to what a throw of the dice

might slap me with the hardness of its truth,

for now I savor the moment

and joy that I can still embrace this moment.

by Henry H. Walker

June 21, ‘26