who is "us"?

Social Distancing

no touching,

6 feet, or more, between us,

hunkering down in our own houses, our own apartments,

by ourselves or with the closest of family,

I watch videos, even from a few weeks or months ago,

and the social rules are glaringly different:

handshakes, hugs, people within a foot or two when talking,

I wonder:

is the shaking of hands

a residual reminder

of who is “us” in evolution?

that we instinctively knew that touch was of trust,

we could be close to another

and not fear betrayal, the knife thrust,

but below that conscious reasoning,

somehow our deeper selves knew 

that closeness allowed contagion,

that touching the other was how we could say

we are the same, we are in this together,

our challenge now is to feel connected to others

in spirit, in sureness of commonality,

for now, we need to hug the closeness in our heart,

and deny the closeness in our bodies,

will we learn fear of the other from the distancing?

or will we feel a solidarity with the other instead?

I want to get back to a world

where we can trust in the handshake,

and where we can open ourselves to the hug.

by Henry H. Walker

April 7, ‘20

what a friend we have

Steve Autman

a person’s life is a movie,

with only the star in every scene,

even those closest experience but fragments of the show,

maybe only a few stills,

maybe a rough recap of what happened at times,

my buddy Mark’s story started intertwining with Steve’s story

whey they were both ninth graders 

at Wilmington Friends School in Delaware,

by that point in the movie

the family was set:

a successful father working for Dupont,

a homemaker mother raising the kids,

a successful driven first born,

an older sister, another older brother,

and Steve, the baby of the family,

a charmer, whose people skills allowed him 

to break into the established social hierarchy of Wilmington Friends,

its 214 year history then full of inertia, like the cliques,

still Steve won his way into the hearts of his peers

to be president of his senior class,

even more what he loved was football,

where he was small, but fast,

quick like his sprinter father,

Steve was selected co-captain of the football team

and helped lead them to a winning season his last year,

including a victory over their major rival, Tower Hill,

Middlebury College called him as the 1960s wore down,

Steve and Mark found their way to Woodstock

for a few hours in 1969,

the magic some found there 

more a disappointing discomfort to them,

one of the great tragedies of Steve’s life

came with every law school he applied to

not answering his call,

so what did he do?

he threw himself into serving others,

spending his life working for non-profits,

always seeking to find a way forward for others,

such as the deal he finagled

for a city to donate a building outside of Philadelphia

and for him to find how to let it serve as incubator

for startup businesses who needed its help, his help,

Steve wanted marriage to work, so he tried it two times,

Steve wanted to write, so he worked and worked at it,

hoping for his words to help today become a better tomorrow,

Steve was always sensitive and felt keenly the effort

that others, and he, lived just to get through

present moments toward a better future,

as Steve’s life is winding down,

I hear of what an extraordinary person he is

through the words and soul of his good friend Mark,

who bonded with him in the ninth grade 58 years ago,

and who wants to treasure his memories of Steve

while both of them still remember

how each fits the other’s need,

though each of their movies

mostly runs along its own track,

Mark loves those scenes

in which they were co-stars.

by Henry H. Walker

April 3, ‘20

death and taxes, and denial?

what endures?

death and taxes:

the only two things guaranteed,

according to popular culture trope,

only change is immortal,

and we mortals have an expiration date 

hidden on us,

but there, just the same,

our stories can obsess themselves

with a protagonist craving to live forever,

a denial of a cloture to our individual ego,

even the meditations I use from a wealth of traditions

promise an eternal life if we but dissolve our individuality

into a sense of self that is the larger Self,

of life itself, of a Self that originates, preserves, and passes on,

then taxes, a reality almost as sure as mortality,

yet American wants to deny that the collective needs our money,

that what we want needs to be paid for,

at least partly by us,

maybe we should add denial

as a primal enduring truth to death and taxes,

as I write these words to understand and capture where we are now,

the world around me reminds me of its enduring truth:

the sun is setting slowly, and the oaks above me

are topped with a vibrant yellow gold,

as blossom and leaf come out,

and the sun celebrates their audacity

with its fleeting enthusiasm of illumination.

by Henry H. Walker

April 2, ‘20

what a teacher is all about

the apple and the teacher

what makes for a good middle school teacher?

we struggle with criteria,

and gradations of meeting those criteria,

and that helps us in the threshing,

of getting the chaff to blow away

so that the kernel of who applies reveals itself,

for near two generations

I have worked as educator in the middle school,

and a truth emerges to me, shouts at me,

that what is most important

as to who it is that works with our students

is a sureness within them

that the driving definition of them as teacher

is the centering of school

upon what is best for the students,

upon how to see each student for who they are,

to know them, to love them,

to help each find a workable path

to a future that calls to them,

all else falls away:

the academic accolades of the applicant,

the expression of an abstract vision for teacher

as being to student, as modeler to the clay, as shaper,

I search for evidence that a teacher knows 

literature and writing as a wholeness:

the apple an organic whole

and not just a sum of its parts,

the wholeness of the experienced

matched by the wholeness of the student and teacher,

the teacher, at their best,

holds within themselves

who the student is,

and all the paths that can call to them,

who strives to live the art

of holding in the heart and the action

both the reality of what the present reveals

and the reality of what the future allows.

by Henry H. Walker

April 2, ‘20

the assault of the other

distancing

I e mail a friend about how she is doing

in this time of Covid 19 and sheltering in place,

she’s feeling positive:

“It’s warm and we live in a low population density area.”

viruses, like ideas, particularly thrive in close quarters

where an insularity of self has to bump up

against others who are different,

and who can challenge the sureness of our easy ideas,

of our take on the universe,

of the integrity of our body,

now we are thrown back into family,

the closeness of partner, of our children,

of the rooms within which we live and know ourselves,

social distancing a rule of our existence outside the home,

I wonder about our politics where such distancing

denies us contact with the others’ ideas,

cities are of congregations,

where proximity to others

can force opinion, and immune system,

to deal, to grow up, to learn the other,

and change to meet the challenge,

to learn how to consider and deal with

ideas and assaults of virus, of bacteria, of thought,

that challenge how parochial we can be.

by Henry H. Walker

March 30, ‘20

the ethereal physicality of dance

Annie Dwyer

I live a mile from C.F.S.,

and I often go by there on weekends:

to photocopy, to pick up something, to take something,

part of my cleaning at home has me take stuff to school,

part of my cleaning at school has me take stuff to home,

while there I look over to the Center Building,

and more times than not,

Annie’s car is there, often just Annie there,

doing all the prep work for her kids in dance,

her kids are there, too, at times,

as the Winter Dance Concert comes together,

or any extra gift of dance she is working out for us,

Annie has lived a definition of self as teacher

as “called,” as feeling no limit to what she can give,

except for the limitations of finite energy,

now staff also often feel a call to do more,

to expand their gifts to students and school

beyond the most narrow of a job description,

and extra compensation can be a goal that drives them,

Annie is of a different time, a different hearing of the “calling,”

our business manager laughed, and appreciated Annie,

when she said that if we paid Annie

for all the gifts of time and expertise to the students,

it would bankrupt the school,

I have long marveled at Annie and her work,

I check in with her often,

and I use my camera to chronicle process and product,

as for decades Annie has seen

the mover, the person, the dancer, the choreographer,

in the Lower School,

in the Middle School,

in the Upper School,

even in the Early Schools,

and nurtured that self to find its “voice,”

the way body and movement can express self,

I have joyed in witnessing countless young people

come into the power of themselves in dance,

as she and they open doors to that power

and she helps with the coaxing of the hesitant to step forward,

to use dance as vehicle for self to be and express,

even nurturing the male student for whom the door can seem distant,

my whole self as educator believes in the power within

that can reveal itself in writing, in discussion, in science, in art,

in the interaction of self with an explicable universe,

accessible to understanding and revelation,

Annie is guardian for paths and selves

for which and for whom

my talents are of the observer, the appreciator,

while Annie’s talents are as guide,

a guide who has helped hundreds of young people

find and reveal the strengths

that could have lain dormant within them,

hidden and atrophying,

instead, Annie has midwifed glory after glory

to find and reveal itself in movement,

as self and other interact and dance upon the stage,

countless times I have dropped by the Center

and seen Annie intense with a current student, 

with a former student, an alum, still supporting them 

in their quests for how their lives can make a difference,

Annie has made a difference,

helping the world improve

one step at a time, one leap at a time,

one moment at a time as the soul reveals itself

in the ethereal physicality we call dance.

by Henry H. Walker

March 28, ‘20

my subconscious works hard

the mentor of a dream

the familiar trail opens the woods before me,

and I slip fast among friends

of tree and stone and dropping creek,

until it’s time to turn around and head back,

I start down a different way to return,

a place where the woods open to sun and road and house,

I joy in running,

making great leaps into the air,

and I feel like I’m flying,

a brief touch on the trail 

and I bound again,

the way is new,

but I’m sure it will reconnect with what I know,

I check my watch and I’m on schedule,

then the trail, which was heading back to the familiar,

peters out into but hints of possible ways,

I see someone in a house, knock at the door,

and the person inside laughs at my confusion

and asks if I want to know the trail,

he tells me where it is but his face turns all quizzical

about where the trail will come out,

I name where I started,

and that name doesn’t register for him,

instead he names two roads where it goes,

numbers I don’t recognize,

still he reassures me a bit that the trail

is of the area I know, though maybe not,

I wake then, enough into consciousness

to realize my subconscious is working as hard as it can

to make sense of where we are now,

and the indeterminacy of where we’re going,

for now where we are feels fine,

until I look around and realize this path is new,

one I haven’t travelled,

one I do not know for sure where it will come out,

as I began to wake at 5:00 a.m. this morning,

I felt myself an anxious child

mentored by my subconscious self,

a self who deals with the titanic possibilities

my conscious self would rather leap over

and pretend that the path before us is charted,

and will get us home.

by Henry H. Walker

March 24, ‘20