Deb Shaw – A man may make a tool

A man may make a tool.
Bend and shape and sharpen it to his will.

So may a tool shape a man.
Over the years, its heft and weight will hone a man to hardness.
Chiselling muscle and bone into hard-edged planes.
Raising calluses like stones.

A man may hammer and tap and scythe and dig.
And leave his maker’s mark upon the land.
But it will leave its mark on him.
In the buck of a saw, the scrape of a knife.
In the blackened and broken nails of the smith. It is there.
And so by degrees they exchange their natures.
So a man may make of himself a thing of iron and stone.

A man may walk into the weather.
Through the kick of the wind,
the bite of ice, and the flare of the sun.

A man may raise stock.
Raise a hill of corn from the black soil.
Build himself a mountain of hoof and horn.

A man may make a field.
Plant and sow and scratch his story in the soil.
But so will the soil leave its print on the man.

And when he dies he leaves only his bones behind him.
When his bones are gone, there is nothing.
He bequeaths only mineral traces to the land that bred him.
Just the faintest feather dusting in the soil.

Man and land. Tool and hand.
Soil and stone. Muscle and bone.
Seed and grain. Their stories remain.
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Books
The Button Tree Book. HLF. Editor. 2018.
Mysterious Littleport: Myth, Magic and the Supernatural in a Fenland Town.
(2nd ed. 2015)
Isle of Ghosts (Hare in the Gate Publications, 2015).
The Horseman’s Word (ed.) (HLF funded publication, 2015).
Land Lines (Hare in the Gate Publications, 2014).

Poetry
Winner, Cambridgeshire County Council, ‘A Sense of Place’ (2010).
Shortlisted, Fenland Poet Laureate, 2012, 2013.
For details of past, present and future work, please visit our website. www.fieldtheatregroup.btck.co.uk
Facebook: Field Theatre Group or Deborah Curtis Writer.

Trailers and links to films
The Horsemans Word, HD1 trailer, youtube.
Captured Souls. www.youtube.com/watch?v=jj9twxyeu00
Common Ground: Trailer, view on YOUTUBE.
Land lines Introduction to Land Lines – YouTube www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEMkR22Ayf8
‘Award winning multi-media drama from The Field Theatre Group. An imaginative journey through the Fens….’