A Grandmother's Touch

I think of your hands decades before mine

Entering the world curved and frail

Smooth and soft as cream

Fresh as luscious fruit

Unharmed and untouched

By time

I think of your hands nimble and fickle

Your nails polished and prim

Tapping on the jaws of a typewriter

The sound, like pellets of rain

A soothing afternoon symphony

Of childhood

I think of your hands during sleepless midnight hours

Bleary and dazed, hurrying to feel him

By your side

                               I think of them lonely

And desperate beneath the sheets

The crevices between your fingers smothering

Your fears in prayer  

I think of your hands as emblems

Of age – the wrinkles between your knuckles

Like the split dry branches of a tree,

Bare before the bitter glacial breeze

Of winter

But I cannot think of them

Still as stones

The protruding veins parched and empty

When they have finally yielded

 To the peril of years

I cannot think of your hands

Like scattered carcass

Cold as bones