the child is mother to the best within

the inner guide

at the heart each kid I ever really know cares deeply for others,

and each does their best to walk a line forward and upward,

stumbles work to trip them away from the heights 

to which they want to go,

false paths tempt them away at times

from what they would know as best

if they’d listen to the guide who waits within,

process isn’t perfection:

perfection is stasis,

and process is the means to find what can serve truth

till we can do even better,

mistakes are how to learn the better way forward

and find how to improve who we are, expressed,

to get closer to who we are, inside,

I hear others with a take on it all

that feels profoundly different from mine,

that the child is in control

and selfishly wields their will,

the effect on others of an action is often troublesome,

yet I contend the glitch is in the program,

that programs can be fixed,

that every kid wants to do well,

that every kid deserves the right support

to find the way forward and upward,

the way the inner guide within them knows how to go.

by Henry H. Walker

October 14, ‘16

the calendar at war with the warmth

a hesitant Autumn

Autumn is hesitant to show herself this year:

in the lower valley, only poplar, buckeye, and sourwood trees

seem to watch the calendar and change,

despite the unseasonable warmth,

high on the mountain beech trees smolder a soft yellow,

the clear dry air lets each be a separate glow

to contrast with stubbornly green neighbors,

the mountain ash exuberantly displays clusters of seeds

with a flaming red that transfixes me into wonder,

over 6000 feet the clouds settle onto the high mountains

and curtain the views into mists of gray,

late morning sun then abruptly lifts the veil a bit

and views of distance and depth shake us into

flying out into deepening valleys and far rippling ridges,

back down in the valley, the creek is lower than I’ve ever seen it,

tawny and yellow fall leaves hover in still pools

and lightly twirl where water eases down its bed.

by Henry H. Walker

October 7, ‘16

ignore arithmetic, and we're in trouble

Mr. Micawber and Us

as our minds develop, if we’re lucky,

we can learn numbers, how they inter-relate,

and how the abstraction of math

illuminates the concrete world in which we live,

Mr. Micawber in Dickens’ David Copperfield

declared the consequence of income and outgo:

 “My other piece of advice, Copperfield,” said Mr. Micawber, “you know. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.”

yet emotion can trump those truths,

hijack our rationality away into hope, avoidance, denial,

we can avoid the audit of the accountant within

and choose to spend treasure today, even treasure we don’t have,

and not think about the bill that will come due tomorrow,

we might imagine that something

can magically save us from our bad decisions with money,

we then never do the basic arithmetic

that Mr. Micawber counsels us to use,

functionally, we are then infantile,

with impulse control issues,

as if we never grasped basic math

and never opened ourselves to an audit,

what profiteth a man to gain the world

and not be able to pay the bill for the world when it comes due?

by Henry H. Walker

October 2, ‘16

the mud, and the stars

truth at a funeral?

at a funeral how much should the whole person be remembered?

or conversely, should only the laudatory find expression,

as the loss beats hard at us?

what leaps at me is the wholeness, which includes the flaws,

I seek to tally up the positives, and the negatives, 

to understand how victories were won,

and what led to the losses,

all within the holistic context of a self

striving to do good,

striving to do well,

it is even more impressive to me

to know what sought to hold one down

and then to see how high a person could still rise,

the distance from the mud to the stars deserves praise,

the question is just when the mud should be acknowledged.

by Henry H. Walker

September 30, ‘16

there's more to "smart" than raw intelligence

intellect alone can’t do it

what does it do to a soul

to have a mind chock full of facts, logic, and processing speed,

and for whole sections of reality to be walled-off from you?

to know the name of every tree and not to see the forest?

to desperately want to connect with others and

not to know the paths,

not to know the rules,

not to speak the language

that can bridge a path across the emptiness

to the others you love but somehow cannot really know,

it reminds me of artificial intelligence work:

at what point and in what way

can a processor develop a holistic self

that can decide and know what to do with it all?

we humans are of connection,

the intellect alone doesn’t reach across space

with the love and understanding that can bond a two into one.

by Henry H. Walker

September 30, ‘16

a desperate loneliness

how wide the continuum

on the continuum of how we’re put together,

it is much easier to get along with those

put together much the same way we are,

for the universe manifests similarly to each of us,

imagine someone on the continuum, though,

who doesn’t hear the same messages you do,

who in interacting with other people can’t quite see them or hear them,

normal human conversation as if in a foreign language,

how scared and alone that person must feel,

maybe, to compensate, that person will tell a story,

give a speech, let the others come to him,

since he can’t come to them,

I feel for that desperate loneliness,

but I fear for us if that person becomes a leader.

by Henry H. Walker

September 25, ‘16

the turbulence of the ever present now

Max 3.75

I see before me a beautiful young man:

his eyes dance with his brilliance,

his body throws itself at the world

with an energy that chafes at any bridle,

his will as daunting as his looks, his mind, his energy,

 his parents work as hard as he does 

to figure out when and how to allow, to restrict,

to manage the spirit without stifling it,

to let his power develop in service

to what is best for him,

not just in satisfying the momentary impulse,

he cares deeply for his parents,

and increasingly figures out 

who we are as Grandmama and Granddaddy,

how to connect, and how to deepen the connection,



I am in awe of any who truly understand a developmental stage,

I feel more like Max

feeling and reacting to the tossing currents

without quite being able to know

how the future is being built

in the turbulence of the ever present now.

by Henry H. Walker

October 1, ‘16