So you can marvel

Give Your Writing The Edge's Nugget No.26, November 2022 reflects upon the value of work done with the hands. 

Not everyone has hands, not everyone has the use of both. 

Ever since I penned that Nugget, however, Brian Walter's poem Workman #2 has hummed in my brain. It's a perfect demonstration of how a man's mind, heart and body are integrated and fully engaged, as he is "grounded in his purpose, balanced in his humanity."

Workman #2

i.

I have to choose today

- whether to walk the forests

or get on with house repairs,

and soon I find myself out

buying a window frame,

a tad too big, so I must devise

ways to fit the casement to its space:

this cottage window, small

and pretty, for our bathroom.

I like to repair, to set things

to rights. I may turn from words

to maintenance, but am a dreamer,

too, and I wonder at the roads

I will not take today,

the paths I am not getting to pick,

between the right, untrodden,

or the well-worn left.

ii.

I glaze the window,

setting glass into the mullions,

tapping home the glazier's points,

thumbing in the softened putty:

I've been working this repair for days

and now it's almost done,

a new window frame set

and glazed so that one day

upon a time, morning bathed, you

can slip the bathroom window open

and marvel at the fresh outside,

at what metaphors do in spring.

 - by Brian Walter, in What It Is, Ecca Poets, Plettenberg Bay: 2020

The unhurried momentum of these lines speaks so well the non-machine, the un-preprogammed, living action emerging out of a moment's instinctual choice - "soon I find myself out/ buying a window frame"; which leads, then, to the work of blood and flesh - and continuous, self-conscious thought - "I wonder at the roads/ I will not take today".

This dreamer's dreaming does not delay his action, he glazes, sets, taps home, thumbs in - what a lovely roll of verbs to tell the process; even as the poet joys in the jargon and techniques of "mullions," "glazier's points" and "softened putty". Steady, patient, he gets there - "now it's almost done".

The penultimate stanza creates a garden of fairytale charm, allowing the sensual dreamer his in as he imagines his loved one "upon a time, morning bathed" opening the window he has fitted. The word "slip" in the third-last line adds the most delicate degree of mischief, as the poet at work slips himself into the frame, as it were, and walks off with the prize: the window glazed and set, the loved one bathed, it's the marvel at "what metaphors can do in spring" that flowers the finale.

It's the dignity of fulfilling work, creative action saves our souls and makes us smile.

Photo by Fredrik Öhlander on Unsplash