Working (April Challenge 22)

Prompt: Work

Working (1)

I never have hobbies.
Sooner or later I turn them all
into professional skills.
Usually sooner.

Except for reading.
But that’s like breathing –
not a hobby,
a necessity for life.

The rest I teach or sell.
Hand-made tank tops
when the kids were little,
sold through a local shop;

crochet lessons,
classes in my home
(I’ve still got the patterns
and templates somewhere);

and now, psychic reader
these last 20 years,
after the first, hesitant, long-ago
dabblings in Tarot;

and healer
and witch –
treatments, lessons,
ceremonies, spells.

Always too, along the way,
the writing workshops,
performances, articles, reviews,
and books, my books.

Even reading, after all.
I was 18 years a librarian;
I tend to forget that.
And now an editor.

None of it made me rich
but I always vowed to work
only at what I loved.
And so all of it makes me rich.


Working (2)

Today I might be
a column of light
radiating

tomorrow
a conduit
for trapped spirits

perhaps I’ll be given
someone’s heart
to touch and mend

or a soul to inspire
with words not mine
spoken through me

a lost animal
needs to be found
or a friend protected

a stranger saved from death
or helped there gently
another healed of wounds

occasionally even
a battle
seldom alone

I never know
the next of these tasks
until it’s upon me

the invisible work
beside and beneath
the mundane.

23/4/09