an update on me now

 Henry at 77

I can feel clarity these days,

absorbing 7+ decades of life,

of thinking, of feeling,

of reacting, of asserting,

of letting truth speak to me,

of working hard to hear it,

of working hard to make sense of it all,

I still can often craft answers of word and action,

to what I feel revealed that feels good to me,

I can assert that insight onto the page,

and within the actions I take in the world,

particularly with my work to nurture 

the flame of Carolina Friends School,

I still work to be part of the answers

students and staff give to the callings

within the great work that every school attempts,

and that I think we at CFS do well,  

I do not want to be a lonely, plaintive voice,

but rather I work to be a voice that echoes

a reach for connection and complexity,

of that drive for order that somehow fuels evolution,

a drive that we want to fuel our human touch upon the world,

as long as I can, I hope to be a conduit

through which coherence

manifests a bit better because of my work,

despite the dissolution

of aging, of entropy, of glitches,

of an all too present malevolence

that suffuses much of America these days,

many throw monkey wrenches

and seek to hobble us as we seek to climb.

by Henry H. Walker

March  22, ‘25