The Bridgebuilder

There is a lovely brook I’m told which splits a gigantic farm in two. A blue line against a lush green sea. but two brothers see it as a boundary, an ugly scar against their landscape. a silly quarrel they had and then refused to greet, to speak or even see each other. So they feverishly searched for craftsmen, a wall, partition, should they build and then divide the two farms for good. Seasons folded unto seasons, days upon days seeds grew, became trees, and calves, cows. Still no word they spoke, nor desired any ... and the farms, they remained beautiful Still, this haunted the two siblings for there was no hedge or wall at all What if they saw each other by mistake? worse still, if their children became friends? For they were cousins after all, family, blood. This just could not be, a wall had to come. adverts, more posters, pleas to friends ... Then one bright morning just at cock's crow, a stranger called at the eldest brother, a traveling handy man in need of a job. the brothers employed the stranger to erect their own great big wall. Days and nights he worked and toiled they heard the rhythm of the hammer, the sad song of the saw, and the chisel the plane, the punch, the file, the rasp a virtuoso creating a symphony with labour. Suddenly the music stopped, the brothers walked to the brook to see their great wall but there was nothing, no wall, not a fence, to the stead they saw a marvelous structure and like toddlers they took tentative steps ended in the center, looked at each other hugged and cried, looked on by a stranger they turned to him and as with one voice whispered “thank you, thank you, thank you.” perhaps tomorrow a barn, alterations, a shed, your craft is remarkable, like nothing of before upon which the stranger made just one reply ... “Other jobs I cannot take, I am a bridgebuilder and a bridgebuilder is all I ever want to be ...”