growing into our best?

 enlarging our world

before we are born

we are swallowed in a warm sea,

as one with the universe, 

until birth differentiates us,

and we have to be alone,

born into individuality but not into independence,

we are blessed and cursed with profound dependency,

most times we bond with the mother

for food, for care, for love,

we expand our bonding to whatever parent, adult, sibling

comes into our world, and cares,

we reach out with our eyes,

with our smiles,

and our world grows larger,

action begets action, and creates connection,

we become a valued part of larger wholes

within which we discover relationship

and find ourselves of worth for we are not just alone,

we fit into the whole

of family, neighborhood, the reality of God,

I think our understanding of self

can be deeply expressed by our relationship to others,

to the universe, to how we are contained 

and expressed in a webbing with people and place,

those relationships make us real and defined within space,

I was lucky to grow up with loving parents,

a stable welcoming neighborhood,

and a world that played by rules 

I could understand and learn,

the past important,

the present accepting,

the future hopeful

and accessible to our success,

such optimism is sorely challenged today

as malignant spirits grow beyond control,

the body politic wrenched by the malevolent idea 

of conspiracies against us, dissolving relationship,

 a dissolution that we must resist,

for just following our easy will 

leaves us prey to infantile, wrecking desires.

by Henry H. Walker

August 5, ‘26