Parkinson's, the demon

a beautiful man

I know a beautiful man,

one who found himself through music,

through his guitar,

and also through kids, through teaching,

through caring, through seeing what should be,

and making it so,

learning can be a labyrinth,

with many twists and turns,

with so much to obscure the way forward

that a student can dismiss it all,

can find it “boring,”

can feel that others have a lack of belief in them

and let that be determinative 

of who they feel themselves to be,

my friend has found way after way

to make the kids’ journey fun,

so that students trick themselves into working,

and, in the learning, find joy,

and find a path through the trackless to belief in self,

now this beautiful man is beset by a demon we call Parkinson’s,

his whole self still cares for every student,

but now he has a labyrinth between him and them:

damn this disease for taking away

this beautiful man’s gifts of expressing himself

through his guitar and now obscuring his way forward

through his teaching,

his soul is not diminished,

his way out to the world is.

by Henry H. Walker

March 8, ‘19