My Hands

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