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from BUILDING THE HOUSE
by Mary Oliver
1.
I know a young man who can build almost anything -- a boat, a fence, kitchen cabinets, a table, a barn, a house. And so serenely, and in so assured and right a manner, that it is a joy to watch him. All the same, what he seems to care for best -- what he seems positively to desire -- is the hour of interruption. of hammerless quiet, in which he will sit and write down poems or stories that have come into his mind with clambering and colorful force. Truly he is not very good at the puzzle of words -- not nearly as good as he is with the a mallet and the measuring tape -- but this in no way lessens his pleasure. Moreover, he is in no hurry. Everything he learned, he learned at a careful pace -- will not the use of words come easier at last, though he begin at the slowest trot? Also, in these intervals, he is happy. In building things, he is his familiar self, which he does not overvalue. But in the act of writing he is a grander man, a surprise to us, and even more to himself. He is beyond what he believed himself to be.
I understand his pleasure. I also know the enclosure of my skills, and am no less pert than he when some flow takes me over the edge of it. . . . . . .