cusps and imagination

the mud and the stars

I am blessed, and cursed,

with a driving need to imagine

what futures might lie in front 

of the cusp of this moment,

with my students I feel like a gardener

who can see the flower in the seedling,

I see the best within them

and imagine how wonderfully it might reveal itself,

I can also feel their hurt

and imagine the pain and effort a moment can hold,

I see a few huge tulip poplar trees

and my imagination reaches to hold a past

with the woods filled with a world of such giants,

and I also imagine the horror that turned them into lumber

and their home into a foulness of destruction,

I see the stars and the mud within every moment,

one of my students just opens himself enough to Earth

that he hugs a big beech trunk in front of me,

I thank the stars for my imagination right now.

by Henry H. Walker

May 24, ‘18