self as closer to what writes large

apprentice to all

a jack of all trades, master of none,
yet together we rise
to where I touch the wide truths
that singleness of focus misses,
a jack of all trades, master of none,
yet apprentice to all,

we contain multitudes
and too often we act as if we don’t,
I am an artist, not a scientist,
a person of words and not of figures,
a conservative and not a liberal,
a male and not a female,
or vice versa, vice versa, vice versa,

we seek to define who we are
and too easily define who we’re not,
even though each of us
has bits of all within the sum,
we connect with a part of our selves and wall off the rest,
becoming partly who we are by how we’re not like the others,
and not like the parts of ourselves we deny,

I was a scientist in high school,
a historian in college,
an English major in grad school,
and at each of those times I was also
into service, into the wild, into politics, into relationships,
I have opened myself to asserting my will
and to following my heart,
and, throughout it all, I have loved to find where I’m ignorant
for there I can learn,
and I love to learn,
within me I listen to all the voices
who each have a wisdom, an opening into the truth,
and I do act as best I can, not with consensus,
but with a wisdom that includes the view
from as many windows as I can
so that what I see has depth upon depth,
and is closer to the world within which we live
than to the narrowness of my will writ large.

by Henry Walker
March 4, ’10