new paradigms
retirement first feels of absence,
the laying down of work,
a laying down of a self-definition
that requires self-worth to result from one's career,
the presence of other ways of doing, of other ways of being,
can take a bit of time to find and accept,
new paradigms need to be constructed,
the new school year is just starting,
and I am no longer part of it,
relationships, photos, no longer my charge,
when I began my journey as a teacher,
I wrote that the goal of a teacher is to make yourself dispensable,
that if you help the learner enough,
they will assume responsibility and supervise their own learning,
their education within their own control,
I am working to feel something like that now,
that the vital work of creating and maintaining a middle school
is well in control with the staff there, without me,
maybe now my charge is to let go
and trust in the next generations
to continue the tradition of Friends School,
to help every student and staff
come into the power that is their birthright,
I want to spend the time I have left
on whatever calls to me now,
whatever connections to support,
whatever order to assert:
whether in house, or yard, or garden, or internally,
as in the writing that still calls strongly to me,
to think the good thought,
to assert myself with actions and words,
like with this poem,
to use my now near eight decades
of experience, of thought, of love,
to make a difference for the good,
in this world I dearly love,
I can still live for the good,
for nature,
for myself,
for the future,
and for the past,
I can figure who I am with gusto.
by Henry H. Walker
August 29, ‘26
