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John Walker

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Dry Walling

Pick and lift and fit and settle and chock all day.
Stone scritch-scratches the rough glove.
You invent descriptions for the stone you want:
Thin in-squeezer; flat-long narrowy; square dumper
With a corner lifted like a curled lip.
A heap of stones is a feast of choices;
Stone running thin frays the temper.
When three successive stones fly straight to their places,
Things are in tune that day.

Not that there is a perfect fit:
Doubt comes with the compromises,
But endurance grows with the wall.
By mid-stage,
Footings long buried,
First throughs a memory,
Top stones over the horizon yet,
It’s in the blood.
You hear the chuckle of the hearting trickling in,
And, travelling home, feel more tired
To see miles of walls on the moors,
Some broken down.

But heaving on the copings is play,
A rejoicing that hardly tires,
However long it lasts.

 

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