the way forward?

to escape the darkness into the light

the car starts to roll by,

stops,

the window rolls down,

the parent within introduces self to me

and starts to thank me

for my efforts to know their child,

to support their child,

to work to partner with the parents

to both see the child

and help them find the path forward,

a way to resist the doubt that sirens to the young person,

to find a path they can walk

that escapes the darkness that works to swallow them,

from both of us tears work to force their way out,

as only emotional hijacking can seem to fit the moment,

the stakes are too great for us to trust

that any hand we can be dealt

will be strong enough

so that the child we love will win,

that the child will beat the odds 

that seem to stacked against them,

the tears that come forth are as much of hope as despair,

yet the tears force us to know how important these moments are,

how much we love the child

how much we hope for the way forward to become visible

and followed.

by Henry H. Walker

February 26, ‘21

a leaden winter

 

late February in the Piedmont

this winter has had a leaden dreariness about it:

not much bracing cold with clear skies and quick warm-ups,

instead grey days of cloud and rain

dare crocus and daffodil to come out into exuberance,

and hold back the spring peepers’ piping

till February starts to decline,

garden and forest paths sodden 

from the recurring, and recurring, showers,

spring holds back and doesn’t lurch forward,

now the ground can be worked

but the mud doesn’t want it to be,

in the last week of February

temperatures touch 70 degrees for a few days

so I plant seeds and hope for 

lettuce and sugar snap peas to come forth,

inside I start tomatoes and tomatillos

in hopes of their being in the ground by early April,

the forest feels expectant,

as if at the starting line,

poised to take off when the signal comes,

I feel as if the outside world has a screen around it

within which a slow-motion movie should soon start

and unveil the kingdom of the plants’ celebration

of what stem and leaf can recreate again with a new spring,

it is hard, though, to see past the long daze of grey, 

and see hope.

by Henry H. Walker

February 25, ‘21

despair and hope race other toward the future

 

intelligence vs stupidity

we modern humans are in a race

between our intelligence and our stupidity,

my wife and I got our second shots of vaccine today:

an insidious, often deadly, virus

has been understood by our science,

which then figured how to talk to our immune system,

to convince it how to pattern effective defense

against relentless, mutating offense,

yet right beside such willful use of the mind

paces a willful ignorance that denies observable truth

as clear as what’s before your eyes, as 2+2=4, 

despite what the commentators they listen to assert,

I cannot improve on Dickens

in the duality he described

of the best of times 

and the worst of times, 

coexisting,

the race is on,

and my money and my life 

are betting on our intelligence,

still, stupidity is coming up fast on the outside,

how sad it is that the winner is in doubt,

despair comes at the future as fast as hope,

heart and head need to root

for our better angels

over our lesser demons.

by Henry H. Walker

February 24, ‘21

anxiety undermines our surety

 Holding up?

“How are you holding up?”

is what comes to me these days, 

instead of

“How are you doing?”

a more loaded question,

more open-ended,

more difficult to figure out 

what level of answer it calls for,

this pandemic world is a disturbance in the Force,

a recasting of the lots Fate throws for us to deal with,

winds batter at the structures of our surety,

and how do we hold up in this tumult, in this uncertainty?

what holds true and what breaks down?

anxiety slips between the stones of our making,

and what should feel solid suddenly feels shaky,

our students, their parents, our staff

complain of tiredness,

for our souls are exhausted

from the shifting footing upon which we walk,

from the assault of having to learn new technologies,

new ways to work,

while avoidance pulls hard at us,

while what needs to be done seems to double and redouble,

I even feel good about others making a mistake,

because it feels like less pressure on me to get it all right,

How am I holding up?

How are you holding up?

by Henry H. Walker

February 19, ‘21

in group, we brighten

 

the vitality of relationship

relationship is at the heart of who we are,

at the heart of how we can know ourselves,

we are a “one” that knows it can be more,

is a light in the sky a star or a satellite?

I can know it a bit by whether it moves

relative to the other lights in the sky,

I feel the downside of such relative reckoning

when I measure myself as better or worse than the other,

what a zero-sum game I can then fall into!

how much better it is to enlarge myself,

adding without subtracting,

connecting without diminishing,

I watch our middle school students

feel the pull of the friend, of the group,

and almost desperately find how to respond,

the other calling them,

the wholeness of the group calling them:

a circle spontaneously appears,

recently on a climbing structure on our playground,

and on the field with a ball kicked back and forth,

Covid 19 has forced us into isolation,

into the fear of contact:

touch, closeness, sharing a room together,

our physical self safer,

yet that safety comes at a price,

for who we are is not just individual physical existence,

but a social self who needs the other

like the body needs oxygen,

I feel it in my own introverted self

as extroversion grabs me and pulls me out

into connection, into visiting,

into giving food and word to friends, to colleagues,

to see the other, to know them,

to change who I think I am

by knowing them as me, too,

distance learning can be the best we an pull off now,

but we should not let it be a distancing

from who we are at our best,

each of us has the light of God within us,

that light needs to join with the light of others,

the world can then be as bright as it needs to be.

by Henry H. Walker

February 8, ‘21

Wythe Prillaman

 Alton Wythe Prillaman

what many of us know as God

calls to us to be our better selves,

to release the Light within,

to help others know their own Light

and to help them when darkness swirls and blocks,

I only knew Wythe a bit,

though I know his daughter well,

and I can feel him live in the quality of the life

she gives to the world,

the quality of his life calmly, quietly, flowed from him,

usually with humor,

often with guitar and singing,

that quality of life obvious to me, 

even during the few minutes we visited together,

what a wonder he was to his devoted wife,

who completed him,

and made a partnership with him

that spread goodness to each other,

to their family,

to their friends,

to all with whom they came in contact,

Wythe lived the call to be good, to do good,

to reach out to others whenever and however he could,

to approach the world with love and openness,

openness to what nature could reveal, to the lift of mountains,

to the moments he could have with the mail person,

with his colleagues at work or from the Service,

with his grandchildren who echo him

in their gusto to do right,

to have fun, 

to be themselves,

Wythe knew the potential in people

and loved its revelation,

even the gifts offered after his passing

asked to go to encourage lives of service,

Wythe knew the potential in the situation for humor

and helped it arrive with a quick comment,

with a practical joke,

as the Great Beyond started calling to him

and decreased some of his connections of self with world,

Wythe got sweeter and sweeter,

making sure to tell family what he loved about them,

and what he appreciated about their becoming true to self,

those he touched loved him,

those they touched loved them,

calling them “adopted grandparents,”

appreciating the gift from them

of time, of love, 

sometimes of money when that was what was necessary,

that helped the other get through the day, the doubt,

and become again the better self that called to them

and that Wythe saw in them,

Wythe was of Light,

and though the body can no longer be with us,

his Light still shines bright

in the lives of all of us he touched.

by Henry H. Walker

January 31, ‘21