My Mother’s Hands
I study her hands
on the steering wheel,
the thin shine
of weathered skin.
I know these hands
that prepare our dinner,
file my tomboy nails,
brush my unruly hair.
These are the hands that
soothe aching limbs
and make flowers bloom.
These are the hands
that pour his evening drink,
the one we all know
he should not have,
then wipe our tears
when he walks away,
leaving us confused.
* * * * *
By Chance
I met a local poet
whom I admired
quite by chance
near the bread and
poppy seed bagels
in our local grocery.
We chatted
through our masks
about the difficulty of writing
during a pandemic,
about a poet’s habit
of collecting fragments
for some future creation,
and about where we
might be buried.
It felt oddly natural
to talk about death
with someone
I barely knew,
while grocery carts
wheeled past and
the register rang up
a Tuscan sandwich
with mozzarella
and prosciutto.