The Shepherd

I sat on the top step and watched as he finally let his shoulders grow slack and exhausted, he set down his tools staying like that for so long I thought he might have fallen asleep. I left him there, quietly going to the kitchen to make his tea.
I don't understand his passion, for I have never felt passionate about anything in this life. He is a good man, that I know, but closed and withdrawn, especially when he is working on a piece. I don't understand it but I accept it and I accept his need to unburden himself of the torment these images give him. I accept that it drives him to a remote place. I accept the crying in the middle of the night, and his feverish dreams which pull from him the most terrifying screams and I accept that he has no choice but to endure.
I put the steaming pot in the centre of the table as he comes in to sit in his chair and watch as he mechanically eats a piece of bread and stirs sugar into his cup. His hands are blackened and burnt and he will be sore for days. He doesn't, or can't, look at me or even acknowledge that I am here, lost in reworking and evaluating what he has done.
He will berate himself for the flaws he cannot remove, that no one else can see, and he will pray, asking for forgiveness from his God for the inexactitude of the rendering. This will seem to consume him and he wishes it would, but I know that in the back of his mind he is already forming an idea for the next one. He will create it unhindered by his hands and his eyes, somewhere in a remote corner of his mind. It will coalesce like oil on water, until fully formed it will cry to be released and he will acquiesce, simply a tool for its creation.
And he will return to the workshop, this one delivered, the next ready to be birthed, over and over again, until his hands are ruined and his mind grows quiet, and still I won't understand but I will sit on the top step and watch, reading his mood in the angle of his body, waiting until I see a sign that will tell me its time to go to the kitchen and put on the kettle.