POET, WRITER, TEACHER

 

From a Photograph:  Hand on the Sill  (for Jim Haba upon his retirement)

 

It’s odd what we notice, a sliver of white scar
near the cuticle,  clean short cut nails. 
Maybe it was the fingers opened outward that made me think of you,
or the moony light through opaque glass, that backlit a disembodied skin –
lines, brown spots, wrinkles.   Such a cliché to think the hand a guide,
me thinking of you, how life’s fractured and full with all you have brought to it.

I’d like to believe we are like that hand – always empty, always ready to hold fast.
But the heart, there’s always a cost in the swell and flow of each chamber’s pulsing.  
Aorta, ventricle, each beat cycling, some capillaries so thin they could burst. 
After years of wild beating, all that motion, what if we are stunned in the slowing,
in the long release of what we’ve  loved?    What if each loss does wear down
an artery wall, or harden plaque in a vein?  That enormous muscle starved
in the thinning flow  of  blood still pumps through whatever  opening remains.     
Hand above breast, I try to find it, that offbeat rhythm, to recalibrate what time is left.

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