Voc Rehab

Once my hands, dispirited, unemployed,
hung about the house like down-sized
corporate jocks or hormone hopped-up teens,
out of sorts with the world
and from themselves irreconcilably estranged.

Desperate for something to do,
they contemplated crochet,
arts & crafts, brain surgery,
complicated recipes; coveted
the comfort of a ritual:
a book of old-fashioned matches,
cigarette paper, tobacco pouch, or
the finer arts of crime: sneakthief,
counterfeiter, pickpocket, safebreak,
but in the end could only muster
prodigious mastery of remote control
and the shameful, short-lived solace
of compulsive cuticle mutilation.

Now, cocooned inside your Ford Explorer,
our forearms kiss on the console,
palm to palm, our fingers intertwine,
graze knuckles, caress the little crotches;
thumbs firmly knead calluses and pads,
trace the rivers flowing through the hand:
lifeline, loveline, destiny,
the intricate lacework at the wrist;
the smooth back of the hand
shivers with a kiss−
epigastric rising, flippy-do.

More than the quenchless skin
it is the hands´ insatiable hunger
that astounds me again and again:
the hover and perch and glide
of your fluttering small bird hands,
the dawn song I wake to,
is stilled only by sleep.
I am making of your body
the most intricate map imaginable;
moment by moment, my diligent fingers work

at loosening the hard knots of your living,
unriddling every last secret
from your skin´s obscure Braille,
inscribing its ample surface
with the epic of forty years.