Look at my hands,
all the wide years penned into an
atlas of wrinkles,
blue snakes of veining, scars
where blood
spilled its iron for a cause.
Look at my palm, then
turn it over to see rough-knuckle
memories
going back and back to the time
of all the grandmothers and great
grandmothers
for as long as there have been
hands.
Through me the ancestors still
feel the living soil,
they hum to a newborn with a poem
of holding,
they cradle a beloved face at the
last breath.
Their lives are printed upon all
my cells,
they speak from inside with every
gesture,
behind every grasp, scrape,
caress.
Look at my hands, how they have
been reborn
in my children, still holding the
pencil
that writes the next story.
J. Pratt-Walter, © 2021
