connections across generations

 

the grandparent, within

I offer up an assignment to write a poem

maybe about a relationship

with a grandparent, an aunt, an uncle, a cousin, a neighbor,

and the 12 year olds in my class quietly get to work,

many write of the grandparent,

the tightness of this connection with him, with her,

and then write eloquently, wrenchingly,

of the loss of the grandparent,

who was suddenly not there any longer,

or diminished after a stroke,

yet each who is still there

within the grandchild’s memory,

within the grandchild’s heart,

within the grandchild’s love,

each grandchild embraces the present with gusto, with enthusiasm,

and lives their moments as fully

as the grandparent would have wished,

all of us construct a surface self we give to the world,

and we fear “too much information” 

if we were to show the roiling depths within us,

where we are anxious and insecure, and hurting,

I felt today the students’ sharing as a gift,

for they were real and true to themselves,

and let us glimpse the amazing person within

who dares to feel, and be,

and hold to the connection with grandparent.

by Henry H. Walker

September 16, ‘22