our grandchildren

We were lucky to have some time with our two grandchildren in Acton, MA. Watching and helping in the amazing reality of child development is a gift we savor. Check out the pictures and the sense of science in the child. A new friend came to CFS and helped us with science three months back (check the blog for March 14). He wrote an article for The Guardian (Britain's leading broadsheet newspaper) about CFS and science--a good companion piece for this poem. Check it out at

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/jun/16/science-lessons-inspiration








the child as scientist


in a one year old
the world engenders equal shares of wonder & frustration,



new things, people cascade past the eyes,
fingers twitch, toes curl,













the hand reaches to touch, to grab, to hold and consider,
to manipulate and see what might happen,
the mouth opens wide in wonder,
the mind works hard to figure what’s before it,


wonder . . .

or,

things dull with familiarity, people around aren’t the parent,
the lip curls, a disgruntled cry comes out,
louder and higher if the right response isn’t intuited and acted upon,
or just if the world doesn’t quickly fall into the place wanted,
the cry ramping up until it can sound like an air-raid siren!

frustration. . .

often the right food at the right time can restore balance,
enough familiar and enough new and all is well, for awhile,

consider the 4 year old scientist who can still have that same wonder




and who now has words as tools,
who has filed away experience after experience
and who loves sorting through and finding patterns that explain,
and reveling in revealing sheer competence,





before us today at a museum are
magnets
and objects we can manipulate within the fields they create,
invisible power manifests before us and obeys laws,
laws that need wonder, experimentation,
and thoughtful venture after venture at explanation
for us to fathom how they work,

the 1 year old knows there are rules and meaning to what is,
it’s the figuring them out and the figuring how to act within them
that’s her job now,

magic is one system that holds the wonder
and has appeal and answers that explain,
yet answers that make most of us powerless,
pawns to stars, spells, hoodoo,




I prefer the system of science
when it both holds the wonder
and still reveals the rational laws all have to follow,
and which are accessible to any of us
with clear thinking and the mind to use it,





I think of Einstein and the compass,



his lifelong wonder and devotion to understand
the hidden powers that underpin reality,



the child has to be a scientist to thrive those early years
and will stay so unless we pervert their world
with the destructive side of irrationality
and its child, powerlessness.

by Henry Walker
June 18, ‘09

mid June in the Smokies!

Just back from the Smokies. Wrote some, some about writing, some about actual experiences in the Smokies. Enjoy!


a poem has two masters

in the juggling that writing a poem entails,
the writer has two actions to release and catch at the same time,

first is to write real--
to be specific as to one’s actual experience--
thoughts, feelings, place & event,
centered by the authentic,

second is to choose a filter,
an organizing principle,
to cull out from the real what is also right
for this particular take on this particular part of it all,
the creative touch upon the heart,





I also take pictures
and I like each to be real,
yet when I add my own choices
of what, when, where, and how,
I have taken what is real
and added just enough of me
so that I can sometimes release
much of what was only potential before,
at least for a time,
but a time is all each of us has.

by Henry Walker
June 15, ‘09


just desserts

to me the mountains are like dessert:
they don’t mean as much
unless I haven’t had ‘em for awhile,
the first taste is amazing,
and, unfortunately,
it’s too easy for a treat to become common,




I love for my consciousness
to open onto the world
as if both the world and I awake to the first morning,


we need to earn the sweet.

by Henry Walker
June 13, ‘09


slapped awake

the calendar gives only some openings
and weather and fortune often like
to restrict the possibilities even more,

today we get an early start on the road,
we check the sky for what it will allow,
and, as we approach the mountains midday, it looks hopeful,
we turn off the interstate and climb up to the ridge line,
park the car, lather on the sunscreen, grab the camera,
and hike straight up the rolling meadows of Max Patch,




the beauty of the moment,
the beauty of the view,
the beauty of the wildflowers,
almost slap us with their immediacy,
their gratuitous glory only slumbers if we are not here, asleep,
and, when they slap us, they and we both awake,

at our feet is a sky of yellow buttercups
with clouds of white yarrow,
we lift our eyes to the abruptness of mountains rising,
near and far,
clear and hazing into distance,
their substance solid and real
as if frame to the painting of the flowers,
or maybe the flowers frame them,

I love how the ephemeral contrasts with the lasting,
the rock and its age-old shaping gives a platform
upon which our friends, the flowers,
strut their stuff for a few days,

just above the high ridges the clouds flatten into a darkening grey
and tower white up and up,
whipped to reveal what that which was within them can become,

just below the meadowed top a light forest has been allowed to succeed,
and we find the absurd beauty of a flame azalea,


who slaps us hard with how extreme a flower can manifest in beauty,
its orange and red, voluptuous,
nearby a laurel stands at the ready
to release itself in just as magnificent a flowering,
though subtler in its shadings,

today we have received a gift
and I hope I can stay awake and alert long enough
to appreciate what can be waiting around every turn of the path
for the next few days calendar and all allow us to be up here.

by Henry Walker
June 13, ‘09



mist & sun dance




today the mist and the sun dance with each other,

when the grey one leads



these are misty mountains,
with everything still and all blurred together,
only the shading varies,
and every step up the mountain is hardwon
as if the dreamy world without prefers stasis over change,








when the bright one leads,
the world awakens,
the mood lightens,
shafts of sunlight knife through the trees
and connect ground to sky,
the yellow within the green awakens,
as does the individuality of leaf & rock & moment,

the wind kicks up as if the music speeds up to match the mood,

the lead shifts again, and again, and again,

galax and laurel are like debutantes











presented to the world, perfect in their first flowering,







while the high rhododendron drops off bloom after bloom to the
ground,
though the flowers still on the bush
have enough left for the bees to court them,

we’re at the tail-end of spring,
which has a full week till the sky calls it summer,
how magnificent it is today
to climb up to the high rocks where Earth meets Sky,






and the mist and the sun dance
to let the best of itself and of the other
whirl before us for our wonder.

by Henry Walker
June 14, ‘09

what graduation can mean

graduation: within, before, after


the seniors mill around,
finding their friends,
readying their appearance,



each almost giddy with excitement--
pride at what they’ve accomplished,
keyed-up in anticipation of all the forks of possibility before them,


they’re at the rim of the nest
ready to leap and fly, because they’re “there”,












and also not ready at all, because they’re also not “there,”
for each can see, more clearly now than ever,
where they’ve been
and how sure it is that there is reality to their leaving the old reality,
that old reality often comforting and sure,
for another reality, where they can expect to soar,
yet, of course, each can also expect another possibility
and they can fear a fall,

a baby is born
and it knows nothing of what to expect
while we can be almost delirious








in imagining the possibilities that she will fulfill,
that he will realize,

I love to visit the early school
and see the person start releasing the self,







and the love and care of the teachers
as guides to that release
as self expands in power and definition,


I love to visit the lower school
and see the traits & skills & realities





of the young ones coming more and more steps fully into their own,

I love to teach in the middle school
and to honor every step into sureness,







every release of the best within,
every appreciation of the best without,



I love to watch the dance, to hear the music,







to watch the performance,
to sit in on a class,
and appreciate the upper school


where the potential
of the infant,
the preschooler,
the child,
the young adolescent,
blossoms into a reality that can be awesome,
and scary,

at graduation I love to look at the graduates,
all ready to leap,
and I hope they can remember
where they’ve been, where they hope to go,
and how to live the moment full,




how to get themselves,
how to get the other,


and how to make their world as extraordinary
as each of them can be and become.

by Henry Walker
June 7, ‘09

Cal Geiger, everyone's Friend

Our former colleague, Cal Geiger, died first of the week: peacefully, with his wife Virgie by his side. He was an extraordinary man, a Quaker, a man who lived his faith with every fiber of his being. Below is what I wrote to honor him:


Cal, everyone’s Friend

a great heart beat its last this morning,
though the love and care it lived
still throb faint, yet strong, in our memories,
many of us hope that our hearts can follow that rhythm,
though surely imperfectly,
as I know Cal felt his life to be so imperfect in following
the vision he felt Jesus called to him to follow,
the vision Martin Luther King saw and he shared,
the vision his God gave him,
and he answered with his life, as best he could,

I loved hearing him tell his story,
of growing up in the South, in Florida,
with all the messages the culture whispered to him,
and how he dismissed the ones that lessened others,
and would have lessened him,
and instead he accepted a calling to be a Friend,
to “walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in every one,”
to oppose even World War II,
for war cannot release the best of us,
and I’m still working on really getting that lesson,
his alternative service transforming,
and his life completely given to others for decade after decade,
a commitment to give his best to one person at a time,

a gentleness to Cal, a soft feel that helped you relax when you were with him,
and, as you relaxed, you could hear more surely
which voices inside to heed, and which to dismiss,

the grand issues were part of his life,
the persistent testimony for peace while hard war shouts,
the dogged work for rights while wrongs seem everywhere,
I remember him telling of his sister in Palestine
as Arab and Jew fought for the Holy Land
and she was nurse for both sides:
when she died there was a truce for the funeral,
her loving influence suspending the killing
as both sides recognized her greatness,
as so many of us now are recognizing his,

what I’m also remembering are all the small things--
the twinkle in his eye,
the gracious care he gave to every conversation, to every interaction,
the basket weaving in Lower School
where child after child learned to create,
while so much outside sought to teach them how to break apart,
the pure note of his life as it rang true to what God hoped in its making,

Cal Geiger lived a life
that always chose the whole over the partial,
creation over entropy,
belief over the cynical,
and he lived that positive life even with buffeting shocks
that no one should have to endure,
yet also with a partner who completed him, and she and he are one,
and he and his God are as surely one
as any of we mortals can hope to be.

by Henry Walker
June 1, ‘09

Exploratorium in the Smokies

12 kids, 4 adults, Smokies for 4 days, Mt. LeConte, Grotto Falls, Greenbrier, no bears, a lot of wonderful writing and sharing, a magical time . . . below is what I wrote.

Please note that it is easy to comment on the poem by clicking just below the poem and adding your reaction, positive, I hope. I rarely get comments, and I would love to get more. Thanks, Bill, for your comments.

Henry


breaths at the crest


transitions draw me,
boundaries where road yields to wood,
and I face the wood,
where trail crosses trail,
as winter yields to spring,
as day winds down,
where the kid finds the adult within--
and the adult the kid,

today we’ve slowly wrenched ourselves
out of late spring in the piedmont
to early spring on the Appalachian crest,





wild cherries are in extravagant bloom
here where an ancient native trail crosses
the mainness of the midline of the Smokies,
tomorrow we will find our way up and down another mountain,

for now I’m just opening myself
so that with each breath I can exhale
what I don’t mind giving up of this year:
the worries, the distraction, the short-circuiting
that loosen me from my moorings,
and with each breath I can now inhale cold clear air,
fragrant with cherry and spruce,

and a reminder to stop and remember what’s real
before and beyond the machinations we make to surround us.

by Henry Walker
May 18, ‘09


our genius and curse


a human genius, and curse,
is that we are never satisfied for long,
we can joy in the moment
but the novelty passes--

we anticipate so well
that we can fear the beginning
and forget to savor the middle,

so what does this have to do with hiking up a mountain?

today I thrill at view after view
the crisp clear air allows






and that my hiking energies release,






yet the next moment I move on to not noticing,

I can be in the moment
with the mountains rippling out and away and back into me,




(Clingman's Dome from Alum Cave Trail)




new and fresh like each branch leafing








and each bud flowering,






shape, color, essence elegant and bright with promise,


and I can be in the moment when each step hurts
and I forget what I will gain at the end of the hike up,
some of us on the hike let the effort blind us for awhile
to the value banked by our muscles’ investment,












I want my present moments to realize their worth in themselves
and their worth in the web of connections
that stretch before and after them,

how hard it is to hold our curse
and still recognize the genius interwoven within it,
that keeps us fresh and fully present in the moment,
so that we can find the new,
we do know that this too will pass
and that knowledge, too often, makes us forget the miracle that it is.

by Henry Walker
May 19, ‘09


the novel of a waterfall


a waterfall draws us to it
so that road & trail & foot find it
might near wherever it finds itself,

yesterday we were enchanted by the soft spells
when water chuckles syllable by syllable,
drop after drop released and arced out to sparkle in the sun,



at a falls water rushes and roars
in sentences,
paragraphs,
a novel that stands there and turns its own pages:
the water, protagonist,
the rock, antagonist,
and their conflict fascinates us,


so much of what we know as our world
is sequel after sequel to that first story.

by Henry Walker
May 20, ‘09


filling the glass


I am struck by how full and whole young people often are,
I can see the person true in the twinkle of the eye,
for when the eye twinkles the real person within isn’t hiding at the moment,
I take a picture and often the wholeness can almost be seen,
the picture works,



I am also struck by how I can miss parts of a person,
when I notice the wholeness
I can miss how much the impostor sews doubt within,
the smile and not the fear,
the successes and not the challenges,
the surface and not the depths,
I can see the writer and miss the artist,
I can miss the musician, the dancer, the athlete--
whatever parts of the self are hidden from my immediacy,
yet when I realize my ignorance I excitedly fill in the holes,
I love to know and I love to love as the partial grows fuller,

entropy doesn’t need help in draining the glass toward empty,
I prefer to help Pollyanna’s counsel be true:
to see and celebrate how full the glass is,

I swear I think that helps it fill further and fuller,
if one just believes in it.

by Henry Walker
May 21, ‘09


a passing, a continuing

each of us exists
thanks to countless generations of parents before us
who sacrificed chunk after chunk of their present
for the future of their child
and who dared to hope
that the unique gift of each family might endure,

this morning I sought to hear of a man,
born in southern India into a Hindu culture I admire
but only start to understand,
trained as a chemist, working as a scientist and researcher,
a devoted husband,
with two sons who carry on his legacy,
I imagine that man, who passed away this week,
and his love for his granddaughter who’s growing up a world away,
a few visits, in the Triangle, in southern England,

and I imagine her watching him
in the studied simple elegance of his dress, of his mannerisms,
in his inquisitive drive to understand, his love to learn,
I imagine how hard she wished to know what all went on inside his head,
though she knows his heart and his joy at her accomplishments,
he is gone now and there is so much she would like to know of him,
and I’m sure she missed the call from him today on her birthday,
the way he always called,

if I could call him,
I’d tell him the details I know of his granddaughter:
of how her head, her heart, her effort
should make any grandparent proud,
there’s a joy in life that suffuses Anna,


along with some self-doubt behind her eyes,

and I’m sad for her grandfather, and for her, that the torch is passed
and a new generation must carry on as best it can,

and I’m happy for him and for her
that each had the other for awhile,
and that she feels called to bring out the best in herself,
for him, and for her.

by Henry Walker
May 21, ‘09

an evening of the arts

Arts Eve ’09


how marvelous that so many can find so many ways
to reveal the arts that are within them:

a chorus of 38 middle schoolers,
near 30% of the school,
led by a long term teacher
whose blood throbs the beat of the school,







and a teacher who has been passing through these last few years,
giving his all for the time he’s felt called here,
and there’s been magic in his touch
that will be hard to forget,

the young people learn how to wow themselves and us
with the power of the harmony,
as the disparate finds itself true,
and finds the other,
so that the sound of their joining thrills us
with the greatness of the sum,

and the audience applauds and strolls to another revelation,

recorders harken back half a millennium
as the wind of the Renaissance blows again
from the lungs and the spirit of musicians born
as the twentieth century was ending,









and the audience applauds and strolls to another revelation,

team after team of found percussionists
use tubes, rhythm, and physicality
to make music with plaza & table & high structure,
their enthusiasm, their joy--manifest,

















and the audience applauds and strolls from one drumming to another
and then to the next revelation,





where dancers purposefully move with grace upon the grass
adding sand, grain upon grain, upon the visible structure below,







echoing the invisible structures which hold each dancer to the other
and to the memories of their time here at school,

amplified words and music drive and counterpoint
the movements of individuals, pairs, triads,
every dance fitting into a whole
like the voices of the chorus early in the show,

and the audience applauds and strolls a short way

to where whistle-led drums capture us




and move us to move, to smile,
to close the circle of our movement around the middle school,
to crescendo, and then to move into the building


and to be dazzled by drawings, paintings, masks, puppets, treats,



this art more lasting than ephemeral performance
but requiring more effort from us to find it
and give it the time and attention
that then can call up the creative genius of the artist,


this night many find many ways
to use the arts to express themselves
and with those arts to touch the best of the other
with the best of themselves.

by Henry Walker
May 7, ‘09

we are each part of multitudes

I endorse God Makes the Rivers To Flow by Eknath Easwaran, ISBN 0-915132-68-0.
I use his meditation system and the passages in this book every morning, and have done so for decades. Great stuff.
The poem below certainly owes a lot to the truths inherent in the meditations I work on 20+ minutes every morning.


self as large, larger, largest


I increasingly know that who I am is part of multitudes,

I’m both the atom,
the smallest unit down into which I can be most easily reduced,
the “Henry” I see in the mirror,



and I am also the larger molecules of which I am a part:
within marriage, family, friends,
my school where I help enable learning,
my neighborhood, state, country,
myself as global citizen,
and, greater still, the largest sets: life, reality itself,
all that of which I am a part, a subset,
and that still is who I am,


I believe that self-interest is a powerful engine
that can marvelously focus our energies
so that capitalism, free enterprise, choice
helps us be productive
as we then know the directness of the relationship
between our efforts and what we value,
so we give our best,

how I think we’ve lost our way, too often,
is that we’ve narrowed self-interest
to the smallest unit of who we are,
to the least aspect of who we are,
to who we see in the mirror,
and we can then define ourselves too much as
but the gratification of our senses, the indulgence of our whims,
the infantile and the adolescent within us
who wants to stamp our foot
until the world realizes
that all that matters is what we want, now,

how much better we can be
if we enlarge self-interest
and sacrifice the lesser to the greater,
enlarging who we are as we serve the other
and discover how truly the other is part of us,
and we part of the other,
so that our decisions also value what is best
for the grandchildren of our grandchildren,

I believe that who each of us is
is not lessened by being enlarged,
not diminished by
the deer that eats the flower,
the wolf that eats the calf,
the peregrine falcon that soars beyond any gift to us,
any gift but our joy in its magnificence,

our gratification can be deferred, or even denied,
so that we can be gratified by what is best
for our self as large, as larger, as largest,

when we expand we only lose illusion
and what we gain is extraordinary,
true to the best of the sets which hold us
and pull us into greatness.

by Henry Walker
May 5, ‘09