the story animates
what has been,
history,
has long intrigued me:
early in middle school age
I searched the local neighborhood library
for stories of early civilizations,
in high school my best friend and I
followed closely, like disciples, our history teacher,
in college I majored in history,
seeking to understand how one's world view
shaped what we saw and how we acted,
I worked for decades in middle school
to help kindle curiosity and wonder
as to what happened in the past, why it happened,
and how we today fit into the continuing story,
all of this comes to me
as the last of our visiting family just left,
I find myself in the hallway
where we have framed pictures of our family's past,
starting with my great grandfather who fought in the Civil War,
then moved to East Tennessee and made a life here,
moments served onto the paper for us to linger on,
and that, like magic, hold a moment so powerfully
it is as if my present jumps back into the past,
and a piece of my movie plays before me,
like Apple transforms a static image
into a very short moving picture,
a feat that never fails to shock me
as the inanimate, animates,
our stories are not frozen in the present
but part of an epic movie, with wondrous backstories,
and the next scenes are not yet written.
by Henry H. Walker
December 29, ‘25
