Sunday, March 29, 2020

the ethereal physicality of dance



Annie Dwyer

I live a mile from C.F.S.,
and I often go by there on weekends:
to photocopy, to pick up something, to take something,
part of my cleaning at home has me take stuff to school,
part of my cleaning at school has me take stuff to home,



while there I look over to the Center Building,
and more times than not,
Annie’s car is there, often just Annie there,
doing all the prep work for her kids in dance,
her kids are there, too, at times,
as the Winter Dance Concert comes together,







or any extra gift of dance she is working out for us,

Annie has lived a definition of self as teacher
as “called,” as feeling no limit to what she can give,
except for the limitations of finite energy,



now staff also often feel a call to do more,
to expand their gifts to students and school
beyond the most narrow of a job description,
and extra compensation can be a goal that drives them,

Annie is of a different time, a different hearing of the “calling,”

our business manager laughed, and appreciated Annie,
when she said that if we paid Annie
for all the gifts of time and expertise to the students,
it would bankrupt the school,

I have long marveled at Annie and her work,
I check in with her often,
and I use my camera to chronicle process and product,
as for decades Annie has seen
the mover, the person, the dancer, the choreographer,
in the Lower School,
in the Middle School,
in the Upper School,
even in the Early Schools,
and nurtured that self to find its “voice,”
the way body and movement can express self,

I have joyed in witnessing countless young people
come into the power of themselves in dance,
as she and they open doors to that power
and she helps with the coaxing of the hesitant to step forward,
to use dance as vehicle for self to be and express,
even nurturing the male student for whom the door can seem distant,

my whole self as educator believes in the power within
that can reveal itself in writing, in discussion, in science, in art,
in the interaction of self with an explicable universe,
accessible to understanding and revelation,

Annie is guardian for paths and selves
for which and for whom
my talents are of the observer, the appreciator,
while Annie’s talents are as guide,
a guide who has helped hundreds of young people
find and reveal the strengths
that could have lain dormant within them,
hidden and atrophying,

instead, Annie has midwifed glory after glory
to find and reveal itself in movement,
as self and other interact and dance upon the stage,

countless times I have dropped by the Center
and seen Annie intense with a current student, 




with a former student, an alum, still supporting them 
in their quests for how their lives can make a difference,



Annie has made a difference,
helping the world improve
one step at a time, one leap at a time,
one moment at a time as the soul reveals itself
in the ethereal physicality we call dance.



by Henry H. Walker
March 28, ‘20

Wednesday, March 25, 2020

my subconscious works hard



the mentor of a dream

the familiar trail opens the woods before me,
and I slip fast among friends
of tree and stone and dropping creek,
until it’s time to turn around and head back,
I start down a different way to return,
a place where the woods open to sun and road and house,
I joy in running,
making great leaps into the air,
and I feel like I’m flying,
a brief touch on the trail 
and I bound again,
the way is new,
but I’m sure it will reconnect with what I know,
I check my watch and I’m on schedule,
then the trail, which was heading back to the familiar,
peters out into but hints of possible ways,

I see someone in a house, knock at the door,
and the person inside laughs at my confusion
and asks if I want to know the trail,
he tells me where it is but his face turns all quizzical
about where the trail will come out,
I name where I started,
and that name doesn’t register for him,
instead he names two roads where it goes,
numbers I don’t recognize,
still he reassures me a bit that the trail
is of the area I know, though maybe not,

I wake then, enough into consciousness
to realize my subconscious is working as hard as it can
to make sense of where we are now,
and the indeterminacy of where we’re going,
for now where we are feels fine,
until I look around and realize this path is new,
one I haven’t travelled,
one I do not know for sure where it will come out,

as I began to wake at 5:00 a.m. this morning,
I felt myself an anxious child
mentored by my subconscious self,
a self who deals with the titanic possibilities
my conscious self would rather leap over
and pretend that the path before us is charted,
and will get us home.

by Henry H. Walker
March 24, ‘20

Monday, March 23, 2020

stasis, and change



the virus, and life

why are we here?
what purpose calls to us from out of the void?

we came into reality and then into consciousness,
and somehow there is a drive to want our lives to matter
to make a difference for the better,
our challenge is often to seek the better for the other
who is beyond our personal bundle of senses and ego,

love can pull us to a partner,
and who we are at least doubles,
maybe then to children,
and we step into the chain
that reaches back billions of years
and hopes to find a future with which it can link up,

at our best we enlarge ourselves from our own Narcissism 
to other people as being “us,” too,
maybe then to animals,
maybe then to plants,
maybe to all life that webs itself upon the Earth,

to a virus?
experts argue that viruses are not alive,
that they are con men who only exist
by having others’ lives live for them,

I am at an age where the view out the rear-view mirror is far longer
than the view out the windshield of what’s coming up before me

I want to have been more than the virus,
using up the host in its own self-indulgence,
though that view may be unfair to the virus,
who, like death itself, is wedded to who we are,
our very DNA subject to the tweak of a virus,
maybe to help us punctuate equilibrium
and adapt ourselves to how the world changes,

we are not alone on the world,
no matter what we tell ourselves,
how sad that it takes a virus to wake us up,

how sad that it is still up in the air
whether we will wake up soon enough
to save ourselves and the world
from the self-centered excess that drives us so much.

by Henry H. Walker
March 22, ‘20

advice from the practical



the shop, and the soul

in shop class my student realizes she is capable,
she learns how to use machines
to cut, to drill, to shape wood into a useful form,
a form she conceived and achieved,
something more real than the dance of pixels on a screen,
even more real than the dance of those words 
I so dearly love, in books and writing, 
words which are grounded in the concrete, at their best,
but still beyond touch and concrete substance,

today our cars are engineered beyond our tinkering,
our food usually has a store between it and the ground,
our appliances warn us not to attempt their fixing,
or even opening them at all,
instead of knowing where we are
and finding the way ourselves to where we want to go
with a map, with signs, with dead reckoning,
we become servants to our GPS,
let it find the way that we slavishly follow,
and woe to us if it is suddenly not there,

I want to figure the way myself, when I can, 
on the road, in the wood, in my life,

the girl at the first of this poem
finds out in shop class
that she is not a princess,
for whom others toil,
but instead she is a mover and shaker 
who can do more than she thought, 
if she but will,
the practical shouts at us to learn our world,
to know our world,
to open ourselves to be actors in our own play.

by Henry H. Walker
March 20, ‘20

Friday, March 20, 2020

the Sun, right above the Equator



Vernal Equinox ‘20

I have long been drawn to the change of seasons,
the first poem I wrote well in my adult phase of writing
was of the Winter Solstice,
as dark and loss win for a while,
and set up the miracle of the transient new
in the flowers that briefly joy the moment months later,
the Sun will briefly be right above the Equator today,

I meditate in the dark morning
under gray skies and a light mist,
Native American prayers pull me to them,
and they pull me to the Great Spirit
infusing life on Earth,
and to all the lessons God wraps within nature,

oak limbs above me hold themselves in midnight black,
the tips of their branches hint of bud,







































but mostly the trees are of the skeletal structure of will,
the answer of life to the call of the Sun,
the trees ready themselves to work with the increasing light
to make and store the Sun’s energy in the old green deal,
that deal we name with a clunky term, photosynthesis,

as the day slowly brightens
birds murmur and shout as if an impatient audience
ready for the show to start,
gray fades into muted colors:
the grass greens, the house reds,



the redbud’s magenta looks ready to explode,



I go in and shower,

the day moves on, as do many of the clouds,
all around my wanderings the flora shakes itself awake,
blueberry blossoms pull pollinators to them,



a butterfly visits the quince,
violets and bluets declare it to be their times in the woods,
hickory buds start to open,



the maple readies itself,
and the pine starts to throw pollen upon everything,



with climate change I risk planting early,
12 tomatoes I’ve started from seed are already in the garden,





sugar snap peas, in two separate staggered plantings, rise,






as does buttercrunch lettuce,
two spring plantings,






plus last fall’s that made it all through winter,



next week I’ll plant potatoes in the dark of the Moon,



the day winds down with partly cloudy skies
and a balmy feel to the air,
the north in this country still knows winter,
while the south feels summer coming on,

astronomically, the equinox is of balance, of equality,
this year, a virus, bred of our excess,
shakes our house of cards,
the natural world, though, 
just takes on the change of season,
and makes the best of what it is dealt.

Sunrise, the next day.  The Sun rises right where our driveway points.










































by Henry H. Walker
March 19, ‘20