to newly envisage one's self

Mike’s Gifts

a gift of Mike’s

is complete absorption in the world of another,

in those intense minutes together

the universe centers

and all else circles distantly

away from those grounded connected souls,

another gift of Mike’s

is a vision of how that multitude of centers

can connect and circle together

toward a rightness that needs to be,

each of us circling that of God

with love, like gravity,

holding us together with each other,

I feel the price inherent in such connection,

Gandhi’s favorite Hindu passage warned

that real lovers of God “feel others’ sorrows as their own,”

and Mike’s years of leaning into the pain

former students felt from great mistakes in the past

must have wounded him,

his empathy and action healing them

while the hurt lingers in him,

how wonderful that one can still go West, 

into the frontier

and newly envisage one’s self,

San Francisco, no longer the physical frontier,

lives the cultural frontier

where the grandness of a welcoming America

can return us to our best.

with love, from Henry H. Walker

April 24, ‘16

teacher and student, a team?

choosing more or less

what can make a good teacher?

right now, I’m feeling myself

to be a much better teacher

if my students work with me,

if they partner,

I feel myself to be so much lesser

when a student chooses to follow

each impulse into the chasm of self-indulgence,

our school is built upon belief in the child’s ability

to make the most of each opportunity,

how sad it is when a student gives in to the lesser.

by Henry H. Walker

April 23, ‘16

reality, experience, memory, picture, and word

how hard even the approximate

a picture worth a thousand words? 

maybe. . . but right now

I’m feeling a quantum loss

with either picture or words

when compared to the actual experience,

there’s transformation potential in every moment,

and in some moments wonder can burst forth

as if to make us anew,

as if to let us glimpse the glory

that spirit wants us to know and feel,

we experience, and we can be transformed,

how sad it can be

to share the words

to share the pictures

and then to feel how inadequate

the tools of tongue and camera

and even of memory,

are to experience,

I share slides and words of our Hawaii/New Zealand trip,

and I feel the inadequacy of my tools, of my memory,

of even my experience to even approximate

the revelations inherent in each time and place

we can only start to know.

by Henry H. Walker

April 23, ‘16

taught by the subconscious

truth from dream

last night my subconscious shook me awake about 4:00 a.m.,

my dream full of righteous anger and implausible story,

I thought and thought, and felt,

and suddenly my dullness sharpened,

and cut into my ignorance,

an “aha!” moment

when I realized who the driver was

of an anxiousness that can live in me,

my rational self does process cleanly, surely,

but it takes a submerged self

to slip me truth in the dead of the night,

truth I need to face

and cannot without the help of nightmare,

or even just a dream

that in itself seems of minimal power,

but that, to me, slaps me with a truth

I’d rather not appreciate.

by Henry H. Walker

April 19, ‘16

the frozen frame, and the movie

the pen and the shutter

my camera is like my pen,

a tool that allows me to record a bit

of how the world appears to me,

each snap of the shutter

like each scribble of words in a line,

a way to hold a thought, a moment,

to stop time,

and still know we live the movie,

not the frozen frame,

I like to look at word and picture snapshots

and remember moments, process,

I love to capture moments 

with otters, bears, herons, redwoods, vistas,

 

it’s easier to capture moments with flowers

for they wait for you.

by Henry H. Walker

April 16, ‘16

love should guide our steps

a gift I take from Mother

with her life

my mother taught that love

should guide our steps in this world,

her creed also demanded judgment of others,

yet a judgment weighted toward acceptance,

toward appreciation of attitude and effort,

toward whether the other is open to an enlarging sense of self,

for her, mountains lifted the soul,

and our cabin should endure as gateway

for grounding into nature

and grounding into the best of one’s self,

what a gift I took from her

to support connection wherever I can.

by Henry H. Walker

April 16, ‘16

why they're called "blinds"

blind after blind

we Americans live our lives in boxes:

rectangles are us,

even windows are rectangles,

for many of us, 

those rectangles can release our spirits

into air and wood and sky,

get us out of the cage,

out where birds and squirrels and revelation can open us,

I feel like Johnny Appleseed as to apples,

as I open blind after blind

so that my spirit can breathe,

many close them back again

for the comfort of control.

by Henry H. Walker

March 30, ‘16