Tuesday, April 26, 2016

to newly envisage one's self




Mike’s Gifts

a gift of Mike’s
is complete absorption in the world of another,
in those intense minutes together
the universe centers
and all else circles distantly
away from those grounded connected souls,

another gift of Mike’s
is a vision of how that multitude of centers
can connect and circle together
toward a rightness that needs to be,
each of us circling that of God
with love, like gravity,
holding us together with each other,

I feel the price inherent in such connection,
Gandhi’s favorite Hindu passage warned
that real lovers of God “feel others’ sorrows as their own,”
and Mike’s years of leaning into the pain
former students felt from great mistakes in the past
must have wounded him,
his empathy and action healing them
while the hurt lingers in him,

how wonderful that one can still go West, 
into the frontier
and newly envisage one’s self,
San Francisco, no longer the physical frontier,
lives the cultural frontier
where the grandness of a welcoming America
can return us to our best.


with love, from Henry H. Walker
April 24, ‘16

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