Ode on Hands

Shapely form with thin digits to grasp the world
Bend it to my expectations in the form of love
Turning throughout life, digits extend and curl
With gentle calling like the perch of a dove
What can be exerted in force yet still born to caress?
In appearance like a cut of delicate silk
Yet in texture one must identify and address
Those from an obvious different ilk

In bright youth they clung to a mate by design
Narrow crevices pull together and fill this void
My heart’s jubilation drawn from sweetness divine
Idyllically, as in my dreams, never to grow cloyed
We would travel down an old familiar path
Like the little roads that adorn your central frame
There was no grievance or fear of aftermath
Tied together by two of the same

But flowers fade in the season’s tolling
Blushing blossoms give way to the dawn of new morn
Reality like the roaring tide comes rolling
And shatters all that grace adorned
Suddenly the crevices are as gnashing teeth
Which only serve as an admonition
Now the roads lay on desolate heaths
Now we see sweetness in abolition

Jaded and calloused frame has grown cracked
Like parchment wadded into misshapen spheres
Life broke you and left your fragility sacked
Bitter and bleeding, waterlogged by tears
Turn over your cracking, wrinkled figure
Forever do those roads wind through the dale
Reminding you of how you were once filled with vigor
And on in them hope shall always sail

The trials and tribulations of a well spent life
Elicit brilliant light from its apparent night
There is beauty in these cracks that mark my strife
In the knowledge drawn from my ultimate plight
Find the beauty in the pain of turbulent swells
Move through life with a purpose to make it yours
Experience from the old resonates like bells
And allows you to live like never before