Friday, August 9, 2019

growing-up, harder and harder




our kids, and challenges

the kids I teach
can be privileged with race and money,
and, at the same time, be disadvantaged
by challenges in being different in how they learn,
in how gender troubles their sureness,
in the conflict of coming into their power of understanding,
while at the same time feeling the despair that can permeate them,
as they realize how the adults in charge of the country
are not mature enough to lead us
into the hard choices we need to make,

our country defines itself as devoted to freedom,
but it is more freedom “from” than freedom “to,”
freedom from growing-up 
rather than freedom to choose the way forward,

how hard it must be to hit adolescence,
to feel centered on self and desires,
and instead of being led by Washington,
to have our “leaders” to be marionettes 
controlled by the strings of money,
and fiddling while Rome burns.


by Henry H. Walker
August 7, ‘19


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