me at 65

playing the odds

the house eventually will win

and I will be no more,

yet while I know I play dice with the universe

I also know that I can increase my odds

with exercise, diet, and common sense--

none of which guarantee that randomness

won’t end my game any time--

every morning that breaks upon me is a gift,

more and more precious as the view in the rearview mirror

stretches so much further than what is before me,

I’ve just turned 65

and I helped pull off opening night

for a middle school musical on that birthday,

a week before vertigo turned me around

and laid me flat for awhile,

test after test and all seemed fine

so we added two more tests:

an echocardiogram of my beating heart on Valentine’s Day

and ultrasound of my carotid arteries 5 days later,

and, for now, all looks great,

we start rehearsing for Our Town Monday,

a story of how important it is 

to live a life appreciating each moment,

life is precious, 

and still the capricious can visit us

and end the moments, 

whatever we wish.

by Henry H. Walker

February 20, ’13

to adjust our music

rhythms

the air feels of winter:

crocus and daffodil whisper of spring,

sleep calls to me to mirror

the bare elegance of a leafless tree, and wait to act,

while the bareness of the garden

pushes me to act to be ready for the next season,



rather like the way stores anticipate

the clothes soon to be needed,

winter forces us inside

where it’s easy for viruses 

to add their needs to our own,

almost as if to mock how we build

with how energetically they can take us down,

every person lives a life

as if each is an instrument with its own tune,

and, yet, we do not often play alone

where our flourishes and notes 

just have to cohere with each other,

instead every other also sounds what feels right for each,

and, as we add our sounds together, 

cacophony can cry out,

to be most successful in how we sound the world

we need to adjust our music to others,

to other people and to the grand rhythms

with which the world itself surrounds us,

sometimes we need the grace to yield and follow,

sometimes we need the audacity to wrench the music

into a rhythm we find true and new.

by Henry H. Walker 
February 18, ’13

releasing the light within

Narnia

how many brush strokes does it take 

to make a painting that’s ready to be presented?

what does it take to see the potential whole

and how to use the strokes to get to it?

I watch an actor essay a gesture, a movement, a line,

an artist with brush or papier-mache build a prop,

a choreographer see what is, suggest what can be,

and help it come to be,

a singer find the note and the song

and how to release it on stage,

a stage manager manage the logistics 

and manage the actors to learn the lines 

so that it all gets done, 

the costumer who sees what can be done with material and vision,

and she does it, no matter the hours it all takes,

the make-up artists who accentuate features for the humans

and accentuate the fantastic for the creatures of Narnia,

a carpenter artist who hears what might be built

so that what’s on stage allows audience to believe,

or at least to suspend disbelief,

and he does it,

the musicians, who with vision, and piano, and belief,

enable song and accompaniment to be

so that music transcends and deepens story and performance,

and me? 

 I do whatever needs doing,

whatever that I can figure how to do,

sometimes I’m frame to hold against flying apart,

sometimes glue to hold the disparate into a whole,

I see what can be and I find who can make it so,

and I believe in them and that can help them believe in themselves,

and they make it so,

each brush stroke vital to the whole,

or maybe each are frames in a movie,

and, when the whole is animated,

each part is alive,

and the whole is alive,

what makes life is both the importance of each part

and the miracle of how much more the whole can be

than just the sum of the parts,

no matter how impressive each part is,

there’s an elemental beat that we call chance

and what life does is play a melody

above, around, and against that beat,

how appropriate, that for a musical,

my metaphors switch into straining 

to hold the movement as central to the meaning:

the characters whose very movement can release their stories,

the songs whose sound pulls me in

and whose meaning can undo my distancing

and bring me fully focused into appreciating

the depth of the messages

and the power of the messengers,

whose movement and story and song

pull me into offering tear after tear

in appreciation of the alchemy of what brilliance

can come into being and live upon the stage,

as I told the kids just before opening night opened,

we see them, we know them,

and we are in awe of the totality of their gifts

and the power of what has been wrought

because so many gave so much,

because each held close and let free the power within 

that can hide itself away

and which nevertheless aches to break free,

in our musical Narnia I joy in how many 

break free into excellence.

by Henry H. Walker  February 9, ’13

a tilt, and a skid

vertigo

I am completely in the moment

and I know how this moment connects to the next moment,

how this and that part of what is connect to each other,

the world feels real with a sureness of continuity

like the steadiness of a beating heart,

then, with the suddenness of a thrown switch,

the world changes from solidity to impermanence,

I no longer feel grounded in a world I can know,

but rather loosed of my moorings 

in a world I only partly contain

in how I understand myself and it to be,

no longer do my senses comfortably center my world

so that I know exactly where I am,

where all else is, how we are connected,

and how I can move within it all,

within my inner ear something changes

and I feel as shocked as many were by Copernicus

who changed away the sureness of a fixed Earth,

and, if all is relative, sureness is an illusion,

my vertigo leaves, and I get back to feeling connected,

I still seek to learn from that revelation

that sureness and fixity can be but illusion.

by Henry H. Walker

February 4, ’13

students as story

the prequel and sequel to now

consider the kids in a school as a story, a book,

and we live a chapter with them,

for that story to be, prequel after prequel have been lived,

each is not an Athena who has sprung forth full-blown,

with no past,

a teacher reads the story,

and, if we read it well,

we know the character before us

and our understanding touches the pieces of the plot that is now,

and we enter the story as a new character, probably minor,

in the story the student is telling with his and her life,

and that chapter can be engaging with conflict--challenge,

and we hope with success,

the student moves on into the sequel,

a chapter is over, and yet the story continues,

before our chapter, if we look back, were other chapters

in which the characters faced other challenges

and created their personas through how they learned the world to be,

and how they could be in relationship to themselves,

to others, and to other challenges,

character develops, and the backstory can be vital 

to understanding the character and plot before us,

I want to teach the whole child,

in all the glory and effort, 

the hope and the doubt,

that now manifests,

I also love to know and appreciate the texture of the past

which lives with them in who they are,

and I do like to imagine the future that calls to them

as the whole person can seek to break through 

shell after shell which might hold them back.

by Henry H. Walker

February 2, ’13