Work

DOING A GREAT WORK

            One day a few years ago, as my grandson was working on a Lego project with single-minded passion, he paused and said to me, “Hammy, I am doing a great work,” and I said to myself, Yes you are, and so is everything. The universe itself is an endless system of great works, from the falling of a single snowflake to the movements of the far-flung stars. These words I’m writing are doing the great work of unwrapping thoughts given to me like gifts, and the cars I hear on a nearby highway are heading somewhere on great missions, from finding a good cafe to saving a loved one’s life. We’re all engaged in grand enterprises. Our smallest thought, if we only realized it, requires earnest labor, and being able to type a single word is a little miracle. It’s a great work to give a greeting to someone, or to notice the sunshine on a sidewalk, or to set one foot in front of another, or to help hundreds of Lego pieces fit perfectly together – or to lovingly care for a beautiful garden of flowers, like Delycia, below, does day after day in this season of blossoms.   

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WORK TO DO

(about Andy H., 70, Blessings, CT) 
 
One day, Andy saw a piece of paper 
posted on the wall beside his desk
swaying in the currents 
from the furnace in the cellar. 
The paper was just above a furnace vent, 
and it flowed with the warm air, 
fluttering up and down and side to side 
with subtle, assorted motions. 
It seemed a sprightly piece of paper, 
one that pranced and pirouetted
instead of staying impassively on the wall. 
Beside his silent, businesslike desk, 
this was a serious piece of paper, 
a fashionable and devoted dancer.  
Andy had work to do, and so did 
the dancing paper, and so did the day 
as it twirled and leaped along. 

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Two magnetic poems on our fridge today …