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| My grandfather's hands |
Ode to
My Hands
Five-legged pocket spiders, knuckled
starfish, grabbers of forks, why
do I forget that you love me:
your willingness to button my shirts,
tie my shoes—even scratch my head!
which throbs like a traffic jam, each thought
leaning on its horn. I see you
waiting anyplace always
at the ends of my arms—for the doctor,
for the movie to begin, for
freedom—so silent, such
patience! testing the world
with your bold myopia: faithful,
ready to reach out at my
softest suggestion, to fly up
like two birds when I speak, two
brown thrashers brandishing verbs
like twigs in your beaks, lifting
my speech the way pepper springs
the tongue from slumber. O!
If only they knew the unrestrained
innocence of your intentions,
each finger a cappella, singing
a song that rings like rain
before it falls—that never falls!
Such harmony: the bass thumb, the
pinkie's soprano, the three tenors
in between: kind quintet x 2
rowing my heart like a little boat
upon whose wooden seat I sit
strummed by Sorrow. Or maybe
I misread you completely
and you are dreaming a tangerine, one
particular hot tamale, a fabulous
banana! to peel suggestively,
like thigh-high stockings: grinning
as only hands can grin
down the legs—caramel, cocoa,
black-bean black, vanilla—such lubricious
dimensions, such public secrets!
Women sailing the streets
with God's breath at their backs.
Think of it! No! Yes:
let my brain sweat, make my
veins whimper: without you, my five-hearted
fiends, my five-headed hydras, what
of my mischievous history? The possibilities
suddenly impossible—feelings
not felt, rememberings un-
remembered—all the touches
untouched: the gallant strain
of a pilfered ant, tiny muscles
flexed with fight, the gritty
sidewalk slapped after a slip, the pulled
weed, the plucked flower—a buttercup!
held beneath Dawn's chin—the purest kiss,
the caught grasshopper's kick, honey,
chalk, charcoal, the solos teased
from guitar. Once, I played
viola for a year and never stopped
to thank you—my two angry sisters,
my two hungry men—but you knew
I just wanted to know
what the strings would say
concerning my soul, my whelming
solipsism: this perpetual solstice
where one + one = everything
and two hands teach a dawdler
the palpable alchemy
of an unreasonable world.
"Our hands are extensions of our heart, through their movements people know what we are, who we are and how we feel. Take hold of someone's hand. You can feel the beating of their heart, the very substance of their life (...) As the years pass your hands gain knowledge as does your mind, and grow older as does your body. Your hands carry episodes of your life: scarred, stained, calloused, scratched. Let your hands become the joining together of you and another human being, the extension of your heart, the merging of two rivers, the grafting of two branches, the birth of new life. Your hands are you"
Both Tim Seibles's poem and Walter Rinder's extract highlight the value of our hands as the instruments of our soul, as the extension of our heart's creative expression. Since the name of our blog and project is Palabras da man ao corazón (Words from Hand to Heart) this entry paying homage to "hands" is long overdue, but I thought the 100th entry should also somehow be special, and what better way than pay homage to our hands, the tools creativity uses to put words and ideas in writing?
Both Tim Seibles's poem and Walter Rinder's extract highlight the value of our hands as the instruments of our soul, as the extension of our heart's creative expression. Since the name of our blog and project is Palabras da man ao corazón (Words from Hand to Heart) this entry paying homage to "hands" is long overdue, but I thought the 100th entry should also somehow be special, and what better way than pay homage to our hands, the tools creativity uses to put words and ideas in writing?
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