reconciling my childhood with my now

 holding some of the past

I am in my mid-70s,

still working as a teacher,

still bound firmly to my college-found wife,

still pointed to the future

with our kids and grandkids,

yet the past calls to me,

partially from the hill behind our house 

a place where I build my own worlds,

that intersection between the control of yards

and the whimsy where I am unbound,

so I drive to my old neighborhood,

knock on the front door of two neighboring houses

to ask for permission to explore for a few minutes,

to check out the present and see what still holds of my past here,

no answer from the houses except for aggressive dogs

who lunge against the windows and damn me

for my intrusion into their world,

my elementary school calls me to visit it

and see what I hold dear from eight years

in classroom, playground, cafeteria,

then the night before I realize I can't visit there,

just a few days before, another Tennessee elementary school

suffered horrendous loss, as our country's love of guns

enabled a troubled person to externalize the darknesses within,

too many lost too much,

I feared my presence at the school today

might trigger fear, if only one student might see me,

and worry,

that would be too much, so I just drove by

and gave up my hope to reconcile my present 

with the past that is still with me,

I carry who I was in all the years of growing-up with me every day,

while I still breathe, I want all of who I am

to be with me, to inform me,

to give me fullness in my touch upon the world.

by Henry H. Walker

March 29, ‘23