Poem #6: 'The Work At Hand'

"But I wake to the dutiful death and deadlines that keep me a spirit in thrall..."

For anyone who wrestles with the two works: The work they know they must do and the work that they long to do. For anyone wishing their job landed them outdoors more often, anyone who grows restless at a desk or in an office, anyone who wants dirt on their hands and fresh breath in their lungs. For the painter who also sells insurance, the vagabond tied to a 9 to 5, the storyteller waiting tables, the woodsman trapped indoors, the singer whose song grows quiet under financial weight.

This is for you.

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j

"I am drowned by the work at hand
From the windowless places, it calls
The work at hand that numbs a man
And doesn’t need my hands at all

I am dying the slowest and strangest of deaths
Within these containing walls
The work of my heart, he too calls in earnest
But is hushed by necessities squall

I could roam the forest and sleep under Heaven
And the tales of the land, I’d recall
But the humming florescence of business and mammon
Would bridle me back to the stall 

I could dream of lifting a sail to the winds
O’er waves so mighty and tall 
But I wake to the dutiful death and deadlines
That keep me a spirit in thrall

Oh, hands that are lent to loftier callings
How dare you to have the gall!
Though my nose be to it, this dullest grindstone
Has seen me to bitterness fall. 

I share not the song of a young King David
Nor the travels of old brother Paul
But I’ve got something in me that itches for freedom
That belts out my heart’s yearning call.

And the watch on my wrist, how it surely insists
That dear time, there is not much at all!
But still, I am beckoned to stand and deliver
With the soul-dragging weight that I haul.

So though I grow weary, though ragged and restless
And the hours of beauty are small,
Upward I'll stand to the work at hand 
Till the work of my heart comes to call."


- Ian Samuel Helton, 2025