revelation over control

words should be doors   

animals and plants were named
and we then felt we had dominion over them,

I still hear the conqueror within friends,
as one will name a thing, an idea,
and then think we understand it,
and can even dismiss it,
for we have power over it
 if we know its true name,

if a student has trouble learning,
and we name it as dyslexia, ADHD, auditory processing disorder. . .
we almost seem to believe that then we have a handle on it,
a handle with which we have no need
to do more than name it,
whereas I think the name is only a door
through which we must go and get to know what’s within,

I hear a quote, read in a book,
and I feel the quote and the book get to know me,
and each has more of a handle on me than I on it,

words have power,
for me words are not so much wands to wield
as doors that pull me up into them,
and make me larger
as I choose revelation over control.


by Henry H. Walker
June 14, ’12

I believe

a drive to order   

deep within me I believe,
I believe in an inherent drive to order,
something there is that loves to build enough
that, despite all that falls around it,
it reaches toward the light,
and finds itself truest when it believes,
when it risks effort over surrender,
truth over comfort,
belief over despair,

the life-force cannot always win
for death and dissolution have their truths, too,

yet who I am sees the builder
within the eyes of my students,
within the effort of their parents,
within the awesome wholeness and complexity
that life builds with forest and plain,
upon mountain and within ocean,

it’s hard to trumpet the success of hope
while also still noticing all the sacrifices
of what could have been before what is,

I choose hope and I see majesty,
and I also mourn how much loss
tick-ticks despair
 as time passes and chooses no sides.

by Henry H. Walker
June 5, ’12

graduates!

make the world real    

“your charge is not to fit into the ‘real world’
but rather to make the world real,”
that’s my best paraphrase of a grandmother’s charge
to the 36 graduating 18 year olds today:
some who have been within our school the bulk of their lives,
some finding, or refinding, us in high school,

as I look upon the faces and selves before me,
each peg of their being seems a different shape,
and those who would warn of the world awaiting them
would caution them to grow up and reshape themselves
to fit the holes the inertia of the culture demands to be filled,

what my heart believes, and what I hear in the grandmother’s charge,
is that each peg, true to self and to others,
will help the larger world find the right place
for the graduate to not just fit in
but rather to shape what the world needs,
even if it doesn’t seem to know it,

within all of us we know how to be real,
to be true to the best of who we are,
but we can lose our way
when we forget that which is most real within our best selves
and lose the will to help the world realize
what will be best for all.

by Henry H. Walker
June 10, ’12

into the Smokies

find the still center

what are the voices within us
that it’s devilishly hard to ignore?
I think it’s other people,
I think we’re wired to be social,
to reach for ourselves in banter back and forth,
in the validation of performing and being performed for,
we love to feel connection,
we love to be entertained,
we crave stimulus,

and we can feel lost when we’re by ourselves,

I contend, though, that even more as we reach outward,
we need to reach inward: we need to still,
to not dissipate ourselves in frenetic grasping
of who and what’s outside us,
for most of the time we only touch and cannot hold all that other,
instead we first need to get to know the center within,
as a first step we need to fit ourselves
 back into the natural world


 
 

 
 
where we can feel awe,
then perhaps we are ready to feel the awe
of what we can create
when after we find the center
we can leap forth,
for then, as we express, our voice can be worth hearing.

by Henry H. Walker
May 21, ’12

mountains uplift

mountains resist the leveling of sameness,

I am drawn to mountains--
my eye wants to soar up their slopes,
my feet want to follow my eyes
to find what’s just ahead,

at the top I love to hold the world in the palm of my hand,
and, when the sky swallows me in cloud at the top,
 

I want to learn how to forget the large for a time,
and remember how to hold only what is just before me,
in my eye, in my camera, in my heart,

mountains pull water from the sky, as well as from my eyes,
and they shape water’s falling back to the sea
and offer us rapids, pools, waterfalls in celebration of journey,

in our words we can speak of being uplifted,
the very term like a mountain,
we feel God to be above,
our best to be the highest calling,

in mountains I feel I’m home,
and, like a parent,
they pull me up to be better and better.

by Henry H. Walker
May 23, ’12

beware the whisperer

a voice within
whispers,
just when you want to go out a door,
it whispers that you’re not good enough,
that you don’t really get it,
that, if you step through, everyone will look
and know that you’re just faking it,
you’re an impostor only pretending,
then you can feel others are real
and you’re not as good as them,

whereas I think each of us hears that same whisperer
and self-doubt is the self in front of far too many,

a calling I feel is to see through the doubter in front,
 and celebrate the true self, hidden behind, as it steps through,
and new star after new star can have its time in the light,
and all are brighter when each of us steps through that door.
 

by Henry H. Walker
May 24, ’12

doors into wonder   

Alice finds a rabbit hole,
Lucy a wardrobe,
Meg and Charles Wallace a tesseract,

like each of those characters
we readers are drawn to the adventure
just beyond the ordinary,

I think nature herself is full of entrances into wonder,
which open when we open,
and, when we’re not ready, we see no portals,
we see only shapes that can seem as if a wall,

 
 

 

 

 

 

I watch as a little salamander opens a door for a student,
a snail for a colleague, a bear for some struggling on a hike,
flowers open for others,
vistas open us all,
water pulls us through into its magic,
as does the bark of a tree,
the feel of a rock,
a tadpole opening into legs and the air,

we need to let the Alice within us
follow the rabbit into wonder.

 


by Henry H. Walker
May 24, ’12

time to move

a dancer in the soul

I have a dancer in my soul,
a spirit who knows that only movement
can truly partner music
as feet or head or limb deny stasis,
within we exult as we feel the gifts of the moment,
the rhythms of song ache to release and express
that which life struggles to bring forth,

we live between the great sleep from which we first awake
and the final sleep that can slip upon us any time,
and movement deserves what time it can have,

tonight at our middle school dance
the music and the dancer within called to me
and I joyed in both letting go and applying myself to dance,
and to the other who danced with me
and matched and inspired my movements,

the life force moves
and how wonderful to be able to move with it,
and joy
that, for now, we are.


by Henry H. Walker
May 18, ’12

the spark within needs out

Arts Eve

within everyone
a creative spark wants to find a way out,
so that what one can do
reflects light back on who one is
and light out to others,
so that our companions on the journey
are heartened by what can reveal itself,

at our best we know that we grow larger
when the other is true to self and to the spark within,

the greatest competition we face is the one within ourselves
to let the best of who we are out,
and, at the same time,
to celebrate the best of everyone around us,

we lose the game if we think we only win when the other loses,

tonight is Arts Eve at Carolina Friends Middle School,
a celebration of individual and group:

the musicians, whose years of work on technique, on skills,
allow virtuosity of spirit and instrument to reveal itself,
 

the dancers, who labor to understand self
and to understand how body in space and time can express
what that self needs to release,
 

the drummers, who create sound and storyto tell us what they want to say, emphatically,
 
the actors, who each create character,and who together use those characters to create story,
and delight the audience,
 
the singers, who with the musicians, crescendo into songs,and all of us in the audience come together in appreciation,


































 an appreciation that has built and built
as spark after spark has come alight before us,
and I hope within us,

finally we flow out and into where displays of artwork draw the eye
to appreciate the line, the structure, the way the spark has released itself,
 

 
the way into one’s talents becomes the way out to an audience,
many are the sparks tonight that find a way out to flare bright.

by Henry H. Walker
May 10, ’12

the inertia of the heavy weight of the past

will our wings burn?

this week in Detroit
workers will build our Chevy Volt,
an electric car that has touched a hopeful future
and come back to help us toward sustainability,
away from a future within which we are heedless with energy
and our wings burn as we forget ourselves and limits,
and we will lose who we could become
by being too much the lesser parts of who we are,

tomorrow in North Carolina voters judge what is a marriage,
and too many are sure that only who they are can love and last,
and, like the lesser woman to whom Solomon gave the choice,
they would cleave the baby in two
rather than let the other side have its love,

the future calls to us of hope,
the past calls to us of fear,
and with our choices we will be
either saved or cursed, found or lost,
we will either fly
or our wings will burn.

by Henry H. Walker
May 7, ’12