writing & me

paths to the page

I sit with a blank page before me,
not because I already feel something full-blown within my head,
ready to leap out and stand full upon the page,
though that does happen when a feeling, an insight, grabs me,
already birthed within my consciousness,
more often I sit to write, and wait a few minutes,
while thought after thought shows me a hint of where I might go,
many paths lead from the page and back to it,
and I have to choose which is the truer
as to where I need to go
as to what I need to hold and build with my words,

it’s spring vacation now
and I think to write of how much I need to matter,
of the socialness of teaching
and of how much I need to renew the right energy
to hold to the goal
and to be flexible as to the ways,
of the socialness of parenting and grandparenting
when the joy in the heart can’t keep the tiredness from the eyes,
I think about college basketball:
how much it meant two days ago
for my team to win the national championship,
to watch the game with wife and son
and to buy the celebratory t-shirts next day
and to bask in the glow of print and tv coverage,
and, while I’m writing all this down by a boisterous stream,











a warm breeze and bugs gust upon me,
I look up into the leafing trees








who race to grab and use the brilliant sun
who shouts of the coming summer,
and each leaf has to decide if it’s worth the risk to go for it now,
even though winter murmurs it might still revisit,

tomorrow we will push ourselves physically
and psychically open ourselves to the wonder
of this year’s revolution of the flowers.








by Henry Walker
April 7, ’10