the debt

the Peter & Wendy within   

I feel the kid in me as real,
Peter Pan a touch of who I am,
and somehow I keep ending up as the adult,
the one who has to grow up
and hold the truth of all the other selves connected to me,
I treasure the empathic leap
and the binding it gives me,
the binding to neighbors, family, colleagues, students,
each grouping a whole that can work,
and that I can help the working find a way to be,

I was born the youngest
and it’s been a long time since the Pan in me
has been able to forget what the Wendy in me has had to know,

now, in our national politics,
it seems to me that our side, our President,
when we can get one elected,
has had to be the adult, the one who cleans up the messes
that self-indulgence leaves him,
the messy floor of our country
 that the others who messed it up
refuse to deal with, who run up bills
and then refuse to pay them,
so we have to come in and make hard choices,
and get the blame for how much reality costs,

how hard it is to serve as the grownup
and still have ourselves falsely charged,
felt to be the one indulged instead.

by Henry H. Walker
November 7, ’12