Tracing Hands – A Death Dance

ideally father holds newborn

newborn decades later holds

dying father’s hand

handing off life, into the world

father should be that guide

many hands conveying strength, work,

duty . . . I photographed hands

in Mexico, gnarly and thick, children’s

the old, butchers’ and farmers’

wash women’s and bakers’

rancheros’ and silversmiths’

street walkers’ and gang bangers’

hands, conveying a soul

a life gone left, bad, wrong, right

you got to hold a history in

his hands, the hand off now that

your pops is dead

the last reckoning with old man

imagine hands under rubble, reaching

hands in avalanche, digging

for sky and sun

hands drowning in sea, peeling

the entire sea for air

those hands so active, stilled

and heavy hands now, weighted

not just with death coursing

through but memory of deeds

or deeds undone or hands

that held children back

the back-hand to a face

hands with the whip

bad things coming from

hands, too, the mind

in those hands

in the end, or at the end

of the proverbial rope

hands seek another hand

the walk into death clasped

onto life, your hand, words gone

but the pulse in a withering

hand like an engine of the soul

sputtering to a halt

you hold that dying man’s

hand, and the weight lifts

the baggage is held

like musty photos and documents

a bad man’s hands

but a legacy now in the dying

hand, parents who disturbed

a boy who ended up locked

away using hands to build

things, all the weight of baling

hay, hands in a salute

hands slapped by a French

mother in a terrible land

hands that kept busy

building model airplanes

hands that were up to no

good, or could have been

yet you are there

daughter, lifting a dying

hand, tracing veins, feeling

each finger

a hand now no longer

hitchhiking for Jesus

gone, a memory

but the hand you will

always hold, the last

gulp of oxygen

a hand taking you away

from this death

back to life ……………. 

By Paul with his life-born and rejoicing hands!!

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