For Taylre

Your hands are elegance, Grammy’s rings
on the right
and left indexes,
Fresh
polish
sheen,
There’s a history in those hands.


Creamed corn recipe,
Repairing of hems,
A perfect back scratching
And Miss Mary Mack (Mack, Mack…)


Those graceful hands,
Those weapons used for good,
You always understood the right thing.
Your fingers paint portraits,
Form families, catch stars.
Your hands do all the things
That in your dreams you are capable.
And I dream of you,
skyline in your eyes,
standing on the overhang,
hands open, palms up,
listening,
waiting,
offering.

with disregard

if only you could read me, in explicit rhyme
the light from the stars would spell it out
the waves in the curtain would say,
"Here's how she feels today!"

if only you could smell it, as stark
as the scent of your childhood kitchen,
of your own week-old socks to see
that you don't understand me.

we are the ears that function without feeling,
the moment that happens without thinking.
i am the passing leaf-
energetic, but unheard in the wind.

and each time i speak in an aside
i wish you wrote it, i want you
to view this scene like an audience,
like a presence that seeks the shift,
that notices the sawing pitch of every sigh.