A Man’s Hands - I

In the bakery this morning a tall lean handsome man fondles a baguette;
I suppose he is a policeman, that you can tell by what he wears but that becomes irrelevant as I watch his clean, strong, careful hands
Choose and hold the bread so reverently.
This is the serious stuff of life:
What to eat, and what to hold so gently when you are hungry and alone
In the chilly fog of September mornings

A Man’s Hands - II

The angry bathroom clatter wakes each day
Drawers should slide closed
easily on their engineered gliders
instead grind and grate and slam
a groping noisy wrestling with something
simple as shaving and washing and dressing.
Deeper in bed's burrow of sleep, there, arms reach
with soft soundless words, gently

Gasping out the weekend, crawling, craving
the cold grey gulps of air locking in thick fog arms
winding round my isthmus home
hidden in wait for sunshine sailing free like small boats

What good are tears - will they make me an ocean
Will they make me a boat, will they make me a shelter,
Will they give me solitude? And what good is solitude
on a day so alone, ocean surrounding the isthmus
on both sides I am lost to the land
save through this narrow place I cannot yet go

A Man’s Hands - Ill

The broad hand of a man gripping bread
Curves as it clutches the loaf’s waist instead
His fingers spread wide and press down firm as they take it
Yet maintain just enough lightness and care not to break it

Would he take me and tear me apart
to small malformed pieces
With tactless haste
Rip, dip and devour, soak and drown down
The taste of me

His knuckles bend slightly and part as they grasp on
While I wonder if the hand of a man is
more muscle or bone
Surely though there’s no heart in
Something that holds so close and completely and yet without passion
Will pounce on his warm yielding prey, pull apart and
Consume every shred for his evening’s ration
What he holds now fragile, dear between fingers and thumb
With a sweep of his broad hand later he’ll discard
each last useless crumb

A Man’s Hands - IV

A man’s hands hold many stories. Songs vibrate from fingertips.
We avert eyes. I search his hands for intimations:
Skin, stretched firm, sun-mottled, blue veins map a way to his heart,
Trim nails, half moons gleam clean,
Save the thumb with minute cuticle frays betraying moments of chewed contemplation,
Calloused right index finger informs of intense grip,
Forearm flexors tense in paused anticipation.
I think up his arm and down. What wraps? These arms, and calves clutch and wind round In coiled coupling. There. I think it. Hands and arms and calves, fierce flesh.
In thought only I dare.
Put them on me.