Author: karynhenleyauthor

The Star for Me

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The world’s original entertainers
were surely the animals,
who are, by nature, first-class acrobats.
Hummingbirds hover,
butterflies dip and dance,
bees dive into deep-cupped trumpets of mandevilla,
roly-polies curl into perfect balls
and tumble across my grandson’s palm.
Even the box turtle he found last week
performed the turtle trick,
tucking itself into its shell.
But the star for me is the nuthatch,
that small bird who defies expectations,
the only bird in the wide backyard
who tips tail-up, head-down at the feeder
as he snatches sunflower seeds.
Watch how easily he perches facing the ground,
looking at lunch from a different angle,
coming at it upside-down.
Of course, he probably considers his stance
right-side-up.
Maybe he wonders
why the other birds are heads-up.
Or for that matter, why I watch him
with my feet on the ground.
When I was much younger,
I could stand on my head.
Even now, I could try to defy expectations myself,
but something tells me it would be wise
to leave the acrobatics
to the nuthatch.
-kh-

Nurture peace, cultivate kindness, and carry the calm.

Nature of the week:


Shadow of the week:

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Text and photos © Karyn Henley 2025. All rights reserved.

Flitting Among the Petunias

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The butterfly was so small—
with yellow wings—
a sulfur, I think it’s called.
It looked so happy flitting
among the petunias,
a bright spot dipping and swishing
into the pink and purple.
The cat watched,
fascinated.
But being a cat,
she was unable to simply watch
and swatted at it,
brought it down.
It fluttered,
tried to rise,
but was no match for the cat’s paw
and jaw,
for the cat lapped it up,
that fluttery, dusty, yellow-winged thing,
and swallowed it down
in one gulp.
After all,
the butterfly was so small.
-kh-

Nurture peace, cultivate kindness, and carry the calm.

Nature of the week:


Shadow of the week:

If you want me to send these thoughts to your email each Sunday, simply sign up on the right.

Text and photos © Karyn Henley 2025. All rights reserved.

What If You Were the Wind?

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What if you were the wind
flowing ‘round the world
in a whirl of hot and cold,
bold enough to blow a house down,
then a day later,
shy of the sky,
whispery, shushing, hiding,
slyly slipping around trees.
What if you roared through mountain passes,
lapped at ocean waves,
played havoc with sand,
then ran out of gusts
to sigh and sway,
breezy,
sneezy,
tousling the grain in the field,
then nosing through a bubble wand
and tossing the bubble,
twirling and swirling it,
until it arced into a yard down the street.
What if you were that bubble
flickering soapy red and green and yellow
as you rolled on the breeze
and laughed at the neighbor who looked up
just as you floated by
dipping, bobbing, and pop!
What if you were the neighbor
who looked up just in time
to see the bubble pop,
and you stopped
to smile awhile.
Oh, but you are the wind,
the bubble,
the neighbor.
At least you were
for these past few minutes.
-kh-

Nurture peace, cultivate kindness, and carry the calm.

Nature of the week:

Shadow of the week:

If you want me to send these thoughts to your email each Sunday, simply sign up on the right.

Text and photos © Karyn Henley 2025. All rights reserved.

The Key

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A tiny gold plastic key
small as a thumbnail
lay under a lightpost
in a bookstore parking lot.
My grandson found it,
examined it,
wondered what it might unlock.
A fairy’s door?
A toad’s treasure chest?
A bird’s garden gate?
Maybe.
One thing for sure:
it unlocked
his imagination.

-kh-

Nurture peace, cultivate kindness, and carry the calm.

Nature of the week:


Shadow of the week:

If you want me to send these thoughts to your email each Sunday, simply sign up on the right.

Text and photos © Karyn Henley 2025. All rights reserved.

The Deep Knowing of a Stone

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It fits perfectly in my palm,
this rock I found,
heavy, flat, and smooth,
from a riverbed maybe.
It’s a warm, gray-brown,
the color of a rabbit
hiding in plain sight
and just as still.
It would be easy to stack
with other stones,
to create a calming cairn
or to line a labyrinth to linger in.
But maybe it’s meant to simply be held,
a touchstone.
Its curves and weight hold comfort,
solid, sure, simple,
worn and weathered,
dimpled and scratched.
I turn it over and over in my hand
as if I might find a message on it.
There are no engraved words,
but it does hold a message.
I cradle this stone in both hands,
for it holds a deep knowing:
Let the river rage on, it says.
Let it smooth out your rough edges.
Find purpose in stillness.
Be a calming, settled soul.
Outlast the flood.
-kh-

Nurture peace, cultivate kindness, and carry the calm.

Nature of the week:


Shadow of the week:

If you want me to send these thoughts to your email each Sunday, simply sign up on the right.

Text and photos © Karyn Henley 2025. All rights reserved.

Every Drenched Thing

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Every drenched thing bows to the rain—
branches weighed down with water,
marigolds sated and soggy,
lilies drooping and dripping.
This is not a cool, crisp perk-me-up rain
but a bucket dump so heavy
that it will leave a sultry, thick wet blanket
lazing on the lawn,
steaming the garden.
As the downpour eases to a steady silver shower,
clouds drift apart,
sunlight elbows through,
I scan the sky expectantly,
hopefully…
and I am not disappointed.
Against a billowed backdrop
of blue-gray clouds,
a veil of color gently curves,
gift of rain and sun,
sign of hope,
smile of God,
heaven’s arms holding space,
sharing the secret that all light holds:
a glorious variety of hues,
reminder of the glorious variety of humans,
of plants, animals,
rocks, rivers,
skies, seas.
I can’t help but smile and hope,
for on the other side of the rain
there is a luminous bridge,
arcing in a joyful embrace of us all.
On the other side of the rain
is a rainbow.
-kh-

Nurture peace, cultivate kindness, and carry the calm.

Nature of the week:


Shadow of the week:

If you want me to send these thoughts to your email each Sunday, simply sign up on the right.

Text and photos © Karyn Henley 2025. All rights reserved.

I Spy

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I spy something green
and it starts with a T,
and you know (knowing me)
that it’s a tree,
a carefree tree,
for the carefree me
of childhood.
But that was then
and this is now.
I have spied so much anger, so much grief,
so much hurt
that sometimes I want to close my eyes
and spy
nothing at all.
Sometimes it seems as if the whole world
has gone mad
and squeezed the life out of life.
Maybe I care too much
to be carefree.
But then, even behind closed eyes,
I spy something green,
something growing,
and I return
to the childhood game—
with one change:
I spy…something beautiful.
For there is always beauty
of some kind, somewhere.
At this moment,
I spy beauty in a summer-full tree,
a billow of leaves
bowing in the breeze,
waving to three geese winging past
across an evening sky the color of wishes
and strawberry ice cream.
A firefly winks in the cool dark of a hedge.
I catch the scent of newly bloomed jasmine.
I spy beauty.
It’s a game I need
no matter where I am,
no matter what else I spy.
It’s a game I must play
with my whole heart.
Because in the end,
it’s not a game.
-kh-

Nurture peace, cultivate kindness, and carry the calm.

Nature of the week:


Shadow of the week:

If you want me to send these thoughts to your email each Sunday, simply sign up on the right.

Text and photos © Karyn Henley 2025. All rights reserved.

A Silent Slant of Light

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In late afternoon, that quiet artist,
the sun,
pours her light at a slant
into my sunroom—
named for her, of course.
She brightens the window shades
to an eggshell white,
glows neon pink through the translucent
pads of the Christmas cactus,
sparks the tips of my cat’s fur,
gifting her with a silver halo.
Outdoors, she dapples the hackberry
with drifts of green,
lights the fiber between
thread-thin veins of fig leaves,
brightens the fountain of romaine leaves
growing in a raised bed,
edging them in white.
Across the deck, she throws shifting shadows,
creating an abstract of dark, thin stem lines,
grayed patches of leaf shade,
rounded shapes of poppy seed heads,
rippled forms of petunia, marigold, geranium.
I close my eyes and face her brilliance
as she eases lower in the sky.
Her parting kiss, warm and gentle,
paints a smooth, fire orange glow
on my closed eyelids.
The sun is wise.
She says, “Shine through where you can,
and where you can’t,
stun the world with the beauty
of the shadow.
-kh-

Nurture peace, cultivate kindness, and carry the calm.

Nature of the week:


Shadow of the week:

If you want me to send these thoughts to your email each Sunday, simply sign up on the right.

Text and photos © Karyn Henley 2025. All rights reserved.

Why Not Love a Tree?

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It was a death, I realized,
the cutting down of the tulip poplar
taller than our two-story house.
Her broad scalloped leaves were still healthy,
her tulip-shaped blooms pale yellow-green
splashed with orange in the shape of hearts
that looked hand-painted
by some mischievous wood-sprite.
She still looked healthy, shady, perfect
except for her trunk
now leaning at an unnatural angle,
shoved askew by storm winds.
On one side, roots had pulled free
creating a lovely-looking cavern—
if you were a fairy
or a chipmunk.
But even the small cavern was not safe.
Each gust of wind
rocked its grassy root-thick roof
and threatened to fell the tree.
Where exactly would she fall?
Would she crash into the old hackberry?
Would it take her weight?
Break her fall?
Or would she end up in the driveway?
Would she clip the corner of the house?
And when?
Luckily, she stayed standing
until the tree surgeons came.
Unluckily, it was a death.
She had begun her life as a twig
carefully carried home from school
by my second-grade son on Arbor Day.
He chose her spot and planted her.
She was barely visible on the lawn
and was mowed down at least once.
Amazingly, she rooted herself and grew.
By the time my son left home,
she was a grand shade tree
a beautiful reminder
of a little boy
with big expectations.
Now, almost forty years later,
she is gone,
and I am grieving.
Part of me says she was just a tree.
Maybe I shouldn’t have loved her so much.
Then I think—why not love a tree?
Or a dahlia.
Or a yard full of violets.
Why not love a sunrise,
a sunset?
Why not let the heart break
at a beauty so generous,
so fragile.
Love feels loss,
but love never really loses.
-kh-

Nurture peace, cultivate kindness, and carry the calm.

Nature of the week:


Shadow of the week:

If you want me to send these thoughts to your email each Sunday, simply sign up on the right.

Text and photos © Karyn Henley 2025. All rights reserved.

Other Places, Other Times, and a Gentle Rain

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The rain did not blow in
the way it often does.
It came straight down
in threads of silver barely visible
against the backdrop of trees.
But I can hear the gentle wash of it
like a stream running over rocks.
It matches my mood—
serene, soft, pensive,
at the shallow end of sadness.
A nuthatch flits from the feeder,
skims across the roof of the garage,
disappears into dark green undergrowth.
My cat is antsy, pacing.
It’s not a day to go out,
which bothers the cat
but suits me just fine.
A breeze drifts through open windows,
and thoughts of other places,
other times
that once stormed through my memory
now shower slowly down with the rain.
My heart is full and grateful—
grateful for the past,
grateful that it’s long gone,
grateful that I can gladly let it go.
A lazy rumble of thunder rolls in.
The cat runs,
but this deepest growl of the clouds,
this sharpest bite,
fades to silence
along with those deepest, sharpest memories.
I close my eyes,
lean back and listen
to the chorus of hopeful birdsong
that circles through
the showering rain.
-kh-

Nurture peace, cultivate kindness, and carry the calm.

Nature of the week:


Shadow of the week:

If you want me to send these thoughts to your email each Sunday, simply sign up on the right.

Text and photos © Karyn Henley 2025. All rights reserved.