Handiwork

written by Reuben Kendall

Prayer for three voices. Each part separated by a break. 

Tone: intimate, direct, hopeful, meditative, familiar, quiet, reflective. 

Woodworker’s child, 

was it your father who first taught you 

how all the little pieces fit together, 

rough boards and blunt corners 

joining into shapely frames, 

each oddly asymmetrical segment 

made just the way it was, to fit the place 

its maker meant for it? 

How many hours did you sit as a little one 

watching your mother make meals for you, 

learning from her callused fingers quick at work 

to portion the bitter herbs, the biting garlic, 

the acrid seeds splattering in oil, lending their 

blended savor to the beans or lentils 

she could afford to feed you, 

each ingredient itself unfit to eat 

but all together making a meal 

that smelled like home? 

I ask because I find myself so rough, 

so blunt where I wish I wasn’t, 

so oddly asymmetrical, so acrid, so biting, 

so bitter, so unfit to serve 

as anything, it seems, and yet 

as your work-worn hands lift me,  

trim me, choose me, shift me 

into place, I begin to believe 

I could be made just the way I am to fit 

where you need me, to play a part in something, 

poor, perhaps, but lending strength 

to bear up such great weight; 

something comforting, 

something like a home.