Leonor Henríquez

leer en españolThat afternoon I went for a walk with a crowd.Ninety-three people, to be exact, including me.We sat in silence to contemplate the landscape.A little acrobatic bird, the first golden leaves of autumn playing with the breeze, the light throwing handfuls of diamonds into the river, ducklings playing in the current before the fixed gaze of mother duck, a yellow rose stranded in the algae.Sudden discoveries.I closed the book, the haikus anthology 2024, in which, surprisingly, my name appears. The remaining ninety-two are my fellow poets who gave me multiple and sudden sighs of astonishment that afternoon.Each of their poems, in their seventeen syllables, awakened a reverie that otherwise would go unnoticed.Recently, a young friend of my son who was interested in poetry, asked me:...

leer en español       This past week I was the star of a musical, not exactly Broadway, but a musical, nonetheless. I have to confess that they are not my favorite genre, with few exceptions, like “The Sound of Music” and “Jesus Christ Superstar” which I can sing from beginning to end. Let's say that in general, I find something forced in the fact that the actors talk to each other singing, as if that were the most natural thing in the world. Until last week. Yes, I must say that I reconciled myself with musicals. I understood that this uncontrollable and overwhelming desire to speak by singing is totally authentic. It arises from a joy, from a happy place. It's all my sister's fault who came from Barcelona for a few days. It all came back, our childhood, youth, ...

leer en español      They are an indetermination of the mood, a hesitation.Doubts.A perpetual hesitancy that has increased with age, hence this reflection.They say that “when in doubt, abstain”, but I think it would be more appropriate to say, “when in doubt, ask”, because doubt, without a doubt, despite the redundancy, is an instrument for finding certainties and the basic unit of true knowledge.I believe that, in these times of informational and misinformation noise, doubting is even healthy and the first step to exercise that forgotten muscle, good judgment.It is not that my current and senile doubts are existential or philosophical, like that methodical doubt of Descartes that led him to his famous cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I am). I no longer ask myself: Who am I?  It's a li...

leer en españolIt is not common to see a senior gentleman directing traffic on the park path where I usually walk every day.But there he was, stopping the bicycles, ordering the pedestrians to stop and divert their course.When it was the turn for my daughter, granddaughter, dog and I, to cross this kind of checkpoint, we could see that this good Samaritan was protecting a bright green caterpillar, which was trying to cross the road perpendicularly.Yes, that's Canada.We stopped to watch the little worm crawl slowly, for what seemed an infinite distance. Xenon’s paradox came to my mind, the one that says that, since you have to get halfway, and then halfway of the halfway, and so on ad infinitum, it is impossible to get anywhere in a finite time. Something like that.My daughter decided to he...

leer en español      My inspiration has been upset these last few days.It is a kind of restlessness that has overtaken me and distracted my attention.I was about to give up this week, but I don't know if by fate or chance, I came across an old notebook.I started leafing through it, and well, in the absence of anything new, I'm sharing some of my notes from then.“Love is like a passion, you feel different.” (my daughter at 10 years old.)***“Everyone dreams of finding the love of their life, only I dreamed it more intensely.” (heard in a French film)***“Mommy, when did you start to recognize your life?” (another philosophical question from my 11-year-old daughter) I'm still thinking about the answer.***“To be right prematurely, is also to be wrong.” (I didn't take note the source)***“Life ha...

leer en españolA splendid day dawned.Radiant sun, blue sky and a fresh breeze caressing the morning.I decided to go for a walk, feeling light as a blue dragonfly.I arrived at my usual path, on the banks of the river and, suddenly, as a poem that my father recited says, “the heavy brown clouds burned…” (La Nacencia-Luis Chamizo)A gigantic, heavy black cloud settled in the landscape, and I think also in my spirit.A sadness, a little pain, as my mother used to say.I quickened my pace.Dense drops began to fall, and I let them get me wet.I decided to continue without hesitation.Miraculously, the sky began to open, and the storm clouds dispersed.Here in Calgary, there is a saying, if you don't like the weather, wait five minutes and it will change.I think it worked for my spirit too.I returned h...