of four and seven

children play
 

 
in children’s play
the predictable battles the unpredictable,
order versus nothingness,
control versus fear,
when imagination builds high and true within that great house
enough randomness must also find a home
so that the unexpected expected can delight,

too much order stultifies,
too little order and there is no game,

what seems hardest about being four years old
is certainly not the joy when all seems right
but the depth of sorrow that calls to you
when the world denies the play your will hopes to make,
 
 
a seven year old’s boat has more mass than the four’s
and can keep pushing ahead as the seas try to toss it about,
more and more I enjoy talking with the captain
for there’s a lot her charts, days, and musings reveal to her.




 














by Henry H. Walker
June 28, ’12

the up & down of moving

house to home, and back again

a house becomes a home, as it’s lived-in and loved,
 
 
 

and the, a home becomes a house when it’s time to move,
 



 
there’s a totality, a wholeness when a family makes a home
and the shell becomes a fertile egg only when there’s life inside it,
memory after memory come to ghost the things, the rooms,
with echoes of what we did and how we were who we are,
transitions are messy, as is every creation,

in a move, boxes and stuff clutter chore after chore,
each item on a list seems to sprout another list below it,
and another,
and another,
like nested dolls,

it’s all so exciting,
both in the upside with newness and hope,
and the downside with anxiousness and fear,

a new house can grow into a home,
yet, like all transitions, the birth is work.

by Henry H. Walker
June 25, ’12

the constancy of self

  continuity & change

the self has a constancy,
from its first precipitation out of possibility into actuality,
she within the infant’s open eyes appears
 
 and it seems to me she’s still there in the elder,
 

even if Alzheimer’s closes down the access,
 
the enormous developmental leaps of the first months and years
are more acquisition of tools for the master to use
than changes of essential self,
heralds and retinue are added
but the lord or lady remains much the same,

we look at photo albums, and faces change,
 
hair grows, and for those of us longer in the worldcolor bleaches away into purer and purer grey,
first bodies lengthen and later they often thicken,
I can see the adult inherent in the child
and I can feel the child resident within the adult,

our granddaughters sharply present themselves,
 
 

 devastating in the fullness of their self-possession:
words, numbers, understanding, memory, acuity
enough to overwhelm us,

I still feel constancy within their changes,
continuity of a nobility of a head and heart
that increasingly find how to reveal themselves,

the master constant within whirling seas of change.

by Henry H. Walker
June 25, ’12

another chance to get it right

the driver for the child

a driver lives within us
who loves a child
and sends our hopes and dreams
out into possibility
so that who we are
can find ourselves truest,
when out of the power of our adulthood,
even with the lessening years before us,
we believe in the future enough--
and fate allows our beliefs enough--
that a child can be conceived
and the world can get another chance to get it right,
with possibility born to parents who love to love.

 

by Henry H. Walker
June 25, ’12

summer time. . .

the long days around the summer solstice

fall and spring are blunt in their lessons:
the resignation of letting go,
the hope of starting anew,

now the long days around the summer solstice
are busy and less obvious in their lessons,
it’s time to make hay, literally,
as I see grand tawny rolls of hay
in field and moving down the road,

the sun spends so much time in the sky
that every leaf that can works overtime
for that first synthesis upon which
kingdoms of plant, animals, and people base themselves,

wealth for long millennia was what
one could gather and hunt from such casual bounty,

then the farm manufactured the wealth
with which life could exist and be bettered,

industry shifted from the hoe to the tractor,
to industries of steel, aluminum, and plastic,
and now to the power within circuits of chips,
where electrons dance in a synthesis
like photons dance in photosynthesis,

as I sit here by the creek,
lowered by the thirst of all the growing uphill,
sweat flows from me,
and opportunistic bugs bug me with their own needs,
they, like we, crash the party thrown by the dance of the sun upon the leaves,

the rhododendron here choose this time
to jewel their hard curves and prosaic somber leaves
with rose-tinged globes of exquisite white blossom,


time scatters the fallen blossoms upon land and rock
as if in welcome of the season change coming,

 

higher up the mountain, laurel blossoms scatter on dry ridges


where other flowers also assert themselves,
 






this morning the air is clear
and shafts of sun are sharp,


a red-cheeked salamander, distinctive to only these mountains,
reveals itself to our eyes
as they make sure our feet navigate a wet rocky area,
 


by late afternoon clouds have come and gone,
and stayed just enough to soften the light
which finds its way through the greedy nets of flowers
who, in their looking after themselves,
can deny others’ hopes
and still create a whole
whose gestalt pleases the artist within me
and intrigues the scientist who wants the truth of it all.

by Henry Walker
June 19, ’12

a pirouette at the Solstice

midday at the swimming hole
I watch one rosebay rhododendron blossom
fall through the air and
drop down, down into the cold river,

I watch it, as it perches on the flowing current
with the tenuous touch of the water strider,
on the water and not in it,

the blossom flows with the water
as light rapids drop over resisting rock,
 

the blossom actually pirouettes:
who it is responds to moving air and water
and it spins as if in a dance,
 
the rhododendron created it for a purpose and now has no more use for it,

yet because I look,
and because I see,
the random universe produces beauty
almost casual and thoughtless in its offering,

what value do we have to the universe
more than to be one who notices and appreciates what is?

by Henry Walker
June 20, ’12

worries slip in

drivers change

when the school year ends
I no longer have students, their papers, and their spirits
to fill the spaces in my head and my heart,

each precious person behind the eyes
moves off into other places
and once the connection is broken
I head off into chores and plans I’ve put off
 while teaching has consumed me,

when even that work is done enough that I can leave it,
into the spaces within me where the drivers have been
other drivers come in, worries that slip in to nag me
that something is going to go wrong,
that I don’t deserve any vacation for myself,
that I certainly don’t deserve any indulgence,

such a time gives me a taste
 of why so many hold down their emotions,
for once you let go of control,
other forces than your will can be in the driver’s place.

by Henry Walker
June 17, ’12

the crucible of middle school

who we are   

years come and go, decades, too,
and I still know the kid
behind the eyes of the adult before me,

as words tumble from them
of classes they took,
experiences they loved,
insights about themselves and the world
that seemed to have slapped them in the face
to wake them out of lethargy into wonder,
to pull them out of loneliness into friendship,
I hear the wonder that creation could come from within them,
that the difference in a hawk  and a turkey vulture
could clearly reveal itself and is worth noticing,
that doors to learning and to other people
can be open and real,

one former student declared
 that she can’t call up as much from college
as she can from middle school,

what is forged can cut mighty swaths in one’s life,
yet what many remember today is the crucible
where much of who they are coalesced into being,

at my best I am but a catalyst,
an enabler of a process
that is as close to God acting upon the world
as I can imagine.

by Henry H. Walker
June 16, ’12