"a Henry Walker poem. . ."

to name and sketch transcendence

in the course of being who he is,
and doing what he does,
and noticing what he can,
he saw and felt a moment
in which the kids felt, simultaneously,
the joy of who their team is, and has been,
and the loss of who their team can no longer be,
and my friend described that transcendent intensity
as that which can be roughly held in a “Henry Walker poem,”

my gift, which can easily quake me into tears,
helps me to see, to notice, truly,
the other who is also the best of me,
the we who is also so much of thee,

I see and feel a moment
which throbs with as much of the eternal
as I can dare to imagine to hold,
and my pen and my will leap across a chasm
to name and sketch a person, a time, an event,
each of which challenge entropy with exuberance and hope.

by Henry Walker
February 4, ’11