a school should be audacious

the child is central

I still feel the “calling,”

a charge that we can be so audacious

as to care for the whole child,

as to reinvent ourselves and our curriculum, 

every moment,

and still to maintain the best of ourselves, 

throughout that reinvention,

at our best, 

what we are about is holding,

at the same time,

seeing who exactly each student is, now,

plus seeing how that student 

can come fully into her/his powers,

and, in addition, 

the envisioning of how to use our school

to best serve what the past, the present, the future,

call to us to be for the child,

the child central to it all,

whenever I get too much into routine,

into taking a path more because it’s easy than right,

I work to listen more keenly to the call

for us to be fully there for the students,

whenever I feel we’re off the path,

I hope to help us find our way forward,

to listen to what is right, not just to what is easy,

to resist the conventional unless it’s the better path,

to center the universe around a student,

than around another student,

and thus we live education as “calling.”

by Henry H. Walker

July 16, ‘18

steps forward versus steps backward

superstition still can rule us

2600 years ago

some Greeks in what is now Turkey

found a way to use their minds as detectives:

faced with a world of mysteries,

they discovered how to think clearly enough

to grasp at answers as to how the world works,

to find the rules, the causes, before the effects,

the causes no longer just capricious gods

whining their way through our world,

thus were born: logic, mathematics, geometry,

excessive irrationality now treated as superstition,

as myth, no longer comforting, instead, obfuscatory,

red herrings that could lead us off the trail to truth,

as I watch hearings in Congress this week,

as I watch our determinedly willful President this week,

I see them as being ruled by fear and obstinate ignorance,

the heirs to the worst the Greeks thought to transcend,

the nightmares that we carry within us from our prehistory,

I hope that we can move forward with more steps

than the steps backward the lesser within us urge,

there is greatness within us,

how tragic it is that we can choose “leaders”

who call us only to the ignorant evil, also within us.

by Henry H. Walker

July 13, ‘18

Love your enemy?

“them” and “us”

“Love your enemy” is a hard command,

for it’s easy to see the other as enemy,

and to feel righteous in dismissing another

as wrong, as opposite, as irredeemable in their flaws,

it’s easy and comfortable to know who we are

because we know we aren’t that other,

what I work on in my soul

is another path to sureness,

a drive for connection,

to see the other as a source for commonality,

to see excessive individuality as a trap,

just as much a trap as excessive “us” opposed to “them,”

I hope for “them” to become “us,”

I know perils exist that can sunder connection,

that hate pulls at us just as much as love does,

I think Jesus wanted to help us be as one,

every time we choose gratuitous acts of kindness,

we choose love over hate,

and Jesus should smile.

by Henry H. Walker

July 9, ‘18

the bear and I up the hollow

up Grassy Branch

for near two hours I pull myself 

up into the mountains above the cabin,

I push through heat and humidity that force the sweat from me

so that my body is pounds lighter,

though my spirit is pounds lighter, too,

I explore how the woods are recovering from the Great Fire,

much of the trail being swallowed by exuberant new growth,

poison ivy reaches for me at every step,

blackberry vines grab at my arms,

and prick my blood into flowing,

annoying bugs dance before me

and seek to fly into my eyes,

no amount of swatting can keep them away,

after I’ve climbed high up the hollow,

and explored the views and muddy horse trails,

I head back,

as I drop down, I see a great bear

also leaving the higher country,

his path set to intersect mind just where

overgrowth increases the chance I will surprise him,

a possibility his size and history make concerning,

this is a large bear, coming down from a sheltered hollow

my wife and I explored in the winter,

noting pile after pile of scat along the way,

and a large log, high up the hollow,

full of a bear’s scratches,

Scratch Log Hollow, I name it,

the scratches, maybe art? that’s what I’d like,

maybe assertion of self, that seems more right,

I sing to the woods, “Morning has broken. . . “

to let him know I’m around, 
my heart beats faster,

for he could easily make me into a meal,

that truth, that we humans might not be in charge,

shakes me at my foundations,

and I still love these moments.

by Henry H. Walker

July 2, ‘18

A.I. and us

intelligence, artificial? absent?

what profiteth a species

to have the answer to a billion questions,

readily available,

but not the means to know how to ask the right questions?

and the desire to do so?

accumulating knowledge does not coalesce wisdom

from out of the mountains of facts,

we people can still be ignorant, and stupid,

if we pick and choose what to notice and what to ignore,

gigabytes within Wikipedia do us no good unless we access them,

we are fascinated by artificial intelligence,

the way our tools will not just implement directions,

but be able to make decisions themselves,

to be able, amidst a cascade of possibilities,

to see a better path, and choose it,

I wonder how much A.I. intrigues us

because we know, deep down, 

how little we use our own intelligence to make our decisions,

and instead rely on the prime directive from our emotions,

our limbic system in charge, not just in advisory capacity,

I teach middle school,

and every year I watch the empowerment of the mind 

come into its power,

while the hormones course

and Mr. Hyde supplants Dr. Jekyll,

as a species, we need to use our mind 

even to make sense of our emotions,

so that can listen to the advice of the heart

to help steer us in service to the greater good,

the heart without the mind is just as fallible

as the mind without the heart,

somehow we need to program ourselves,

to build upon the surety of our awareness of self

so that the prison that can be the ego can find the open air,

where the best that is possible

shows itself to us as a shining light

that can lead us to the hill where the light will not be hid.

by Henry H. Walker

July 1, ‘18

what nature deserves from us

overwhelmed by nature

differentiation:

what a word!

I am out in nature,

and it’s as if

a slide-show of amazing moments 

rushes at me,

I have no hope

of really seeing it all,

I do hope to slow down, and differentiate,

to see and know one frame,

to hold it in my attention long enough

for me to appreciate how awesome it is,

and, by extrapolation, to imagine the awesome whole,

we visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium:

I could not fathom the whole, though I wanted to,

instead, I loved what I could feel a bit

as moment after moment,

overloaded my sensors of awe,

in nature we need to differentiate

so that the animal, the flower,

the way water dances with the rocks,

slows down for us,

we are overwhelmed as if in church,

at least in church in the way I feel 

God would want to make it so.

by Henry H. Walker

June 30, ‘18

summer transparency apple, sauced

continuity, through the apple

I love to feel a continuity

with those who preceded us:

there is a special apple, summer transparency,

grown in one orchard, I know of,

in these East Tennessee mountains,

my mother with a lot of slicing, trimming, simmering,

pressing through a Foley Food Mill,

and adding more sugar than seems right,

that apple she would render into the greatest of applesauces,

as did her mother before her in these same mountains,

and probably many more generations before her,

I feel my mother, my grandmother, and mothers on back,

working with us as the celestial high summer of June

is celebrated in the tart sweetness of this early apple sauced,

even more important to me in the maintaining of the continuity

is the belief in the child,

in the belief that life is a gift,

to be honored in the twinkle of the eye,

in the raising of the child,

all savored within the tart sweetness

of this June apple celebration.

by Henry H. Walker

June 28, ‘18