Care-full men

Engraved upon a lichen-painted rock
His breath bruising the heather
Or perhaps warming by a candle
In a mountain shepherd’s croft
Made from softly handled stones,
Is there a god of careful men?

Men whose thick fingers weave nets
Deftly and cradle infants as if
They were butterflies. Soft-voiced
With burr and accent. Men who have known
Foamy seas and wise, gentle grandmothers.
Men who imagine, make and invent.

Their wives love them for their silence.
Others talk loudly and make onions of
Their eyes, proffering pine needle friendships.
Ay, the world is made slow and better
By the resolute will of careful men
Grown tall and broad from solemn children.

Such make kings and master carpenters,
Carving treasure from virgin pine like midwives.
The rich resin lives in their eyebrows and sleeps
Like horses upon their forearms. They work
Late, drawing the last light from evenings, bent
Low, singing quietly beneath silver autumn moons.

I watch them, myself a boy, elf-like from under bushes
Or among shadowed roots. They walk alone but busy
On shingle beaches, selecting pebbles. They pause by
Willows and ancient gates with patient prayers, like
Irish hills. They think with deepened eyes and hearts as
Strong as full-blood stallions, stood warily at the valley mouth.

So as there as gods of fishes and angel-farmers
Of the harvest, pure springwater and potatoes,
There must be one charged with rallying the weary
Oaken spirits of careful, clever men. Unless like great forests
And ghost elephants, like legends tumbled into cold hearths,
They will be lost to us all, as the hearts of sunken ships.