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Hand |
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| Fate, heart, head and health: we carry them when we arrive, the cartography of birth. Aged women will tell you of the lines' provinces, of cauls that ward off drowning, |
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or the advantages of a triple-wrapped neck-- such an omen of luck for unthrottled infants, that the household whoops it up. But where, in what raw ink, is that line scrawled? |
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I've looked for the token of favor with my others, and have about given it up. Often, though, alone in the dark, I've felt a lingering touch, as from soft bridal stuff, |
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and wondered if I might be marked. Tonight, the moon burns in a net of shot silk, stars gathered in the web of it, like workers a queen bee granted her sumptuousness. I don't have a thing to do |
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with that bright lot. Down below is my style, where elder and pawpaw are tangled in mist, a place of coarse wefts. I've used the hand to pluck, fend off, strike and hold back-- |
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it's done better than if smeared with directions and luck. Stripped garments in heat, taken eye for eye, grabbed the portions of those I hate, and on occasion saved a piece of cameo glass from raw ignorance. |
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| Yet neither the hand nor I foretell or ward off the bias of a tricky path; it unwinds like a thread in a thicket, always in front. And what snags wait, I couldn't guess. I continue to grope. |
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