I think I’ll just let this one speak for itself.
Your Hands.
It’s your hands I remember the most.
The hard calloused and leathery skin
of your work worn fingers and thumbs,
ingrained with grime, cracked and scarred
by wind, weather and passing years.
I remember your hands as you milked,
as you washed and wiped and parried
the swipe of a wild whipping tail,
one hand resting with warm reassurance
high up on a young heifer’s flank.
I remember the way that they’d pluck
a whiskered ear of sun gilded barley,
crushing the germ between your palms,
blowing away the chaff in a dusty cloud
then biting the grain, testing its ripeness.
I remember your hands at the hedgerow,
cutting with billhook, trimming and bending,
laying a weave of hazel and hawthorn.
Smelling the wood smoke of your fire,
where cold from the wind, we warmed.
I remember your hands as you rested,
rolling Old Holborne, as neat as you like
with the same hands that hammered
or hefted a spanner, or dug with a spade,
yet ever so deftly that roll up was made.
I remember your hands as you waited,
confined to your chair, clean and cold,
they were stripped of their strength
by months of enforced inactivity.
They were not your hands.
Tags: Creative writing, Odd Odes, Poems, Poetry, Writing
