of doors and a play

Through the Door To Wonderland

“what can be” needs a door to be open for it to walk through,
and it needs the actor to believe
that the right effort can get to the other side of the door
and that what is there is ready to welcome a breakthrough to it,

I look into the eyes of our actors
and I see potential poised to wow us and themselves
with spirit, voice, acting,
with their realization of immensity within
that can find a way out,
I am called to see the bright light within people
and to see the possibility that there is a lens
through which vibrant intensity can and will act in the world














it seems clear to me that every class that is taught
is, at its heart, about doors,
and, additionally, that throughout each day, each life,
potential always seeks its way out into the next level,
beyond the walls that narrow us into the lesser,

I love it when I can find a mechanism for the way to open:

we have found Alice, a Wonderland story that came to Lewis Carroll
and which holds within it characters and situations ripe for potential to release itself,







a version scripted and musiced by an adaptor with vision,
a full third of our middle school found within them the will to find the door,
we found the way to be open for all who auditioned
to contribute on or close to the stage,
and ways for more to assist in realizing the magic,

that first moment in rehearsal moves and intrigues me
when self-doubt hangs like chains
to hold each back from the door,
and then each still steps forward,
to deny the power of the weight to be shackles,
and I am moved with the power that it taps
when it lets itself risk,
lets itself believe,
and together we let that belief carry us through the door, too,



the doubter within fears it is too small
until it starts to realize it is large,
and just right,

as each actor, each helper, each director
gets the line right,
makes the prop right,
helps each step to be correct & right,
something extraordinary happens:
a wholeness gives flashes of itself,
enough makes it through to the next coalescing
that I can feel “what will be” becoming “what is,”
like when letters first drop into words
and then one cannot stop reading,
costumes appear, frames to help transform the subject within
closer and closer to the reality Lewis Carroll envisioned,
a piece of a scene, the daring of an actor who commits enough and risks,
and, in the risking, leaps through to a new reality,
it’s then as if mists clear a bit and a shape hints to us of itself,

two weeks before opening night
we share our Alices and Cheshire Cats
with 3, 4, and 5 year olds in our early schools,
and in those younger eyes wonder sparks
and their belief helps our belief,
and our actors start to awaken into that newness
that promises us it’s coming,

a flurry, a scurry, a hurry to fix this, to fix that,
to help further along each step forward
toward a breakthrough into a new excellence,

the week before performance week
virus after virus subtracts actor after actor, crew member, director
from being fully present, or even present at all,
still, the whole that the ensemble makes moves forward
and, though slowed, there is an inexorable addition,
a cohesion of part after part together into a play that is the thing
and that will not be denied,

of courses, glitches stutter clarity: technology, coordination, whatever,
nevertheless, we cross the threshold,

the first full-scale performance unveils itself at school during the day,
we invite the 6 to 9 year olds in the lower school
and the rest of the middle school
those who did not choose this mechanism
through which to release their light within,
at that initial performance for the first time,
we have an audience large enough
to respond as partner in making our new world real,
and we share our time in Wonderland,
I watch the faces in the audience
and I am absorbed in how transfixed each is,
the jokes beginning to be got,
the world we create is believed in enough by those who watch
that their belief builds upon our belief
and what we all feel to be real, lives,

and then it’s opening night:
all my carefully crafted words, before,
the lovingly realized metaphors,
all that abstraction tonight feels as nothing
compared to the concrete reality of actor after actor
stealing my attention,
when I focus on what each is doing,
as I see who each is at the heart and who each is on stage,
tears well up in me because my heart is full to overflowing with love
for who and what I see before me,
for how full each child is with the self each is given
and the self each makes
and with the wholeness which creates itself before me
and will not be denied,




















I offer my tears as a gift to reveal the awe I feel
for each individual and for the group
ensembled into a show that is alive,

Wonderland lives and we visit it with Alice,
while we are there we are entranced,
and when we leave we return home,
changed by how fully each of us stepped through a door
and found ourselves more fully
who we were,
who we are,
and who we can be,
what steps through the door to a new reality
lives fully for only a few days of performances,
and it dies. . .

I stand on the emptied stage after the last performance,
all are gone,
and I sorrow the loss,

I also joyfully long for a return to a golden past,
in our hearts Alice can still live, as long as we remember,
and in our tomorrows we can hope to find the way home again,
when we can find a door and we can step through it,
the best of who we are can again find a way
to glimpse and then reveal the best within us,
that best that can find the way to re-express a golden past
that can remind us of a golden future, well within our grasp,
if we can but remember to believe and to take the right steps forward
through each door after door that can lie before us in our tomorrows.




















by Henry Walker
October-February 12, 2011

"a Henry Walker poem. . ."

to name and sketch transcendence

in the course of being who he is,
and doing what he does,
and noticing what he can,
he saw and felt a moment
in which the kids felt, simultaneously,
the joy of who their team is, and has been,
and the loss of who their team can no longer be,
and my friend described that transcendent intensity
as that which can be roughly held in a “Henry Walker poem,”

my gift, which can easily quake me into tears,
helps me to see, to notice, truly,
the other who is also the best of me,
the we who is also so much of thee,

I see and feel a moment
which throbs with as much of the eternal
as I can dare to imagine to hold,
and my pen and my will leap across a chasm
to name and sketch a person, a time, an event,
each of which challenge entropy with exuberance and hope.

by Henry Walker
February 4, ’11

of schooling and choices

toward the light

a child comes forth into the world
and is schooled by all that is not him, not her,













from the gardener of the parent who works the ground
so that roots can run deep,
who tends the growing shoot so that it can reach toward the light,
to the bracing realities outside that have their own center
with which the child must deal,







the pain of mistakes, every thwarting,
the school of hard knocks,

and early on that which grows discovers the power of cusps, choices,
the possibility and need to act, and react for one’s own self,
and, if possible, for the good of a larger self:
a sibling, a friend,
anything that is best that seeks to be,
that also reaches toward the light,












I am blessed:
I know parenting,
I know grandparenting,
and I know teaching,
in middle school I work hard as a teacher
to let growth explode into empowerment,
first as the nurturing gardener
who supports the natural growth toward the light,
and also the bracing teacher
who pushes the corrections to keep the growth true,

I love visiting the early schools, the 3-5 year-olds,


















for there,
where the growing shoots are ready to lance higher
while early in their time away from the home,
teachers can have a gift
to know and support what works already
in the reaching toward the light,
and what to do to help clear away obstructions
that can deny that growth,
so that the wonder that first came forth
can make joyous leap after leap upward and outward.










by Henry Walker
January 7, ’11

the critic within

Judge With Care

I worry when the older are too judgmental with the younger,
when we notice an action, or a lack of action,
and we judge that obstinate will is the problem, and the solution,
and we’re sure of that judgment,
we judge that the other should get its act together
and just do what it knows to be right,
we judge that it surely knows how to do it right and just doesn’t,

what I fear is that the judge who externalizes to the other
does so because it internalizes
with judgment after judgment on one’s own self,
a self easily found lacking,

I challenge each of us to believe in ourselves
and thus in who the other works to be.

by Henry Walker
January 7, ’11

the falcon can hear

as the train, and as not

the heart beats,
once it starts and until it stops
it marks with each point of the beat
the line of a life,
a timeline on which we can notice event follow event,
as if life is a train that follows a track,
all so linear, sequential,
my consciousness jumps that track
like a falcon released from the train:
I fly back along the track
and I can’t believe a time has passed,











my children and grandchildren were just with me
and I cannot feel that I noticed, and appreciated,
each moment with them enough,
for how can I appreciate unless I pull out enough,
then I’m not fully present in the moment I want to know fully:
I listened to them,
I played with them,
I took care to take care,
and I still feel I was asleep
as if each moment was a glance out the window,
pleasant, fleeting, lost in an inexorable unfolding,

now I sob with loss,

my falcon flies hard and fast
toward the time just past
that I wish I could hold again,
I fly toward the time ahead
when I hope to recapture
more such moments of rightness,
that of the past I loved can maybe be again
in a future I can find,









the train still beats along the track,
and I still feel released as the falcon
to find a way to hold the whole length of the track
within the self I can feel myself to be.

by Henry Walker
December 30, ’10

companion to granddaughters

a force of nature

the human spirit is a force of nature,
like the root that finds a way, regardless,
like water that can sculpt a mountain, given enough time,
like a hummingbird that takes itself from the U.S. to the tropics,
and back again, despite how diminutive it is,
like a storm, or a glacier, or the desert sun,














our granddaughters are each a force of nature,
becoming who they are with implacable force,









though also with an openness to the right nudge,
the right clarifying question or reaction,
so that means and goals negotiate with each other
to reveal connections between consequence and cause,

directions forward have guides who suggest,
a driver who decides,














and at each nexus, each moment of nexus,
each stumbles steadfastly toward a future
that can well express the force of nature
each granddaughter embodies with her soul,
that self who increasingly feels itself here and ready to be:













how extraordinary to be a companion on any part of that journey.

by Henry Walker
December 28, ’10

to honor

I have known Lawrence by seeing him within his daughter Toni: the integrity to self, the humor, the steadfastness of purpose, the devotion to express that of God in the world. Any of us as parents could wish for no better than to live again so fully in the children we love without condition.


Lawrence Edward Williamson

a man,
a man who knew how to be a man,
and how to be a man well,

grounded with deep roots in the pride and clay of the upper piedmont of North Carolina,
that state which values humility, being real and true over seeming and pretension,
with deep roots in Rockingham County, his home his whole life,

born while the country still reeled from Depression, World War II,
and opportunities limited by the color of your skin and the money in your pocket,

born into a farming family with those most American of values at our best:
hard work, from dawn to dusk and beyond,
working with the earth and hoping for the right rain
so that vegetables can grow to fill our stomachs,
so that tobacco can grow to pay the bills,
so that animals can prosper and thus the farmer,

there was always enough love to fill his heart
and enough food to get by,
though times were hard,
and sacrifices had to be made,

Lawrence was very private and didn’t whine his problems;
to appreciate the glory of his life, though,
it’s good to acknowledge the effort he gave every day,
he never planned to retire and gave himself fully every moment of his life,

grounded in family, for in family you can have a partner
who is at least half of a whole you love yourself to be,
for in family you can have children whom you love more than life itself,
and of whom you are more proud than you can bring yourself to say,
the loss of a beloved niece wrenched him to the core,
as he imagined losing a daughter himself,
Lawrence was the baby in his birth family,
and as such his lot was to lose both a brother and a sister
before his time to be lost to us,
family and wife as completely devoted to him as he to them,

though grounded in body and place, in family and history,
Lawrence’s spirit soared,
for in his mind, in his spirit, in his imagination,
he flew up, out, beyond,
always willing to take a risk,
imagine him on the front porch with a cigarette
as he enjoyed long moments of contemplation,
imagine all the jobs he had as he expressed more and more parts of who he was,
who he could be, a jack-of-all-trades:
working wood and making cabinets,
a barber,
a school bus driver, what a way to find “Zet,” the love of his life!
painting cars, a love of maintaining his vehicles always with him,
and then he found a calling in small engine repair,
keeping neighbors’ lawn mowers going,
fiddling rightly with the small
so that the tool would be ready for the large,
a musician, whose bass guitar at church helped worshippers keep to the faith,

he loved the mountains, and the Native American, though not the sea,
and Maggie Valley spoke to him enough for him to get his family up there for years,
and, speaking of years, could the Washington Redskins have a bigger fan?

in his last few years his sensitive side revealed itself more and more,
losing his mother brought forth his tears and his softer side came more to the front,

Lawrence was a gift God chose to give us,
and it’s wonderful how much he continues to be here,
we are lucky to still have his wife and his children,
and all who have been touched and transformed by him,
those who are still here and who honor him with the fabric of their lives
within which he is interwoven deeply,
it’s good to think of him now released and back home:
standing up straight with his hair just right, and no more pain,
may we honor him by remembering the gift of the life he worked so hard to give.

by Henry Walker
December 26, ’10