Essay on the One Hand and on the Other

Consider the palms. They are faces,

eyes closed, their five spread fingers

soft exclamations, sadness or surprise.

They have smile lines, sorrow lines, like faces.

Like faces, they are hard to read.

Somehow the palms, thought they have held my life

piece by piece, seem young and pale.

So much has touched them, nothing has remained.

They are innocent, maybe, though they guess

they have a darker side that they cannot grasp.

The backs of my hands, indeed, are so different

that sometimes I think they are not mine,

shadowy from the sun, all bones and strain,

but time on my hands, blood on my hands -

for such things I have never blamed my hands.

One hand writes. Sometimes it writes a reminder

on the other hand, which knows it will never write, 

though it has learned, in secret, how to type.

That is sad, perhaps, but the dominant hand is sadder,

with its fear that it will never, not really, be written on.

They are like an old couple at home. All day,

each knows exactly where the other is.

They must speak, though how is a mystery,

so rarely do they touch, so briefly come together,

now and then to wash, maybe in prayer.

I consider my hands, palms up. Empty, I say,

thought it is exactly then that they are weighing

not a particular stone or loaf I have chosen

but everything, everything, the whole tall world,

finding it light, finding it light as air.

James Richardson