these hands would be humble touching you.
these hands keep few secrets, like mirrors don’t.
red for my heart. luminous where stars are inside.
these hands are a map. all the sacred terrain, grown to this.
they have guided sails into wind. have given up coins when asked.
have rowed a boat. have been fish in the sea.
have felt water and wind and earth and sky.
they have scribbled poems on yellow paper.
these hands will find their way in the dark.
have held a dying mother’s hand. not sad.
they will guide you home. again.
these hands wrote their own history, so they say.
these hands have a mother and a father.
pockets. maybe that’s where I put them last.
they are the hands I have earned.
scraped, bruised, made to bleed, nearly broken.
they’ve met forever several times.
then you came along. rivers do bend.
wordswerepoemsfirst.com 
this is one of my favourites of your poems Neil – some very beautiful lines especially this juxtaposed couplet
“they have guided sails into wind. have given up coins when asked.”
and what an ending!
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Thank you Laura. For me, real is not always so obvious. I have to look. I have to want to look.
(sigh. WP is not even telling me when I get comments now…) horse & buggy days.
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I read this twice and its seriously incredible. There’s such a beauty to the pacing of it, the way it repeats “these hands,” the ways in which you express a life fully lived through the motion of your hands. And that ending…we are always surprised by life aren’t we?
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Yes. Just as you are surprising me.
I used to privately disparage the lack of conversation here. I felt lonely some. But too – stay out of the kitchen if you can’t take the heat (or lack of comments). Besides. But now my dear friend, I can’t say that anymore. You’ve filled me with kindness. (new poem you gave me I think)
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