Man, Work and Woman

When men get together to work
with their bodies, a sphere of prayer
encloses them–a prayer of bone
and the small, potent muscles
of the hand. This prayer is sung
to a rhythm of joints and weight.
The dead matter of the living Earth
moves through the air, weightless
with the angels’ wings of work.

Sometimes, though, a woman
walks in to give one of them
a message, a reminder, a favor,
and the prayer stops. After she’s gone,
the men stand in the thin air,
feeling strangely singular, and straining
against the heavy lead of their work,
with a new and fluid feeling of being
a whole person, doing a half-man’s job.