take the parts and make the whole

cutting time to double

Mother always said

“Having kids help you cook cuts your time to double.”

yet she also said it with a smile

and with a sureness to offer the chance again and again

to any child who could be enticed into the mysteries

we now have the Cooking Channel for,

I find a hunger to cook in my middle school students,

a desire to take the parts and make the whole,

to imagine something they like

and find the way to get to it,

I find the way to often “cut my time to double,”

that’s why I’m a teacher still

for I see the drive to wholeness within the young person,

and, for now, I still have the patience

to nurture that drive despite all the conflicting dissolutions

that also arise within the burgeoning self.

by Henry H. Walker

April 27, ’17