Metacarpus

Lines of elegance bend in space,
Contract in a gnarled boulder
Twisted bone, sinew, and skin,
Endless wonder to the beholder,
Like a sprout from a husky seed,
Then to rest, as a poised spider.

Grooves in-fold like a river bed,
Endless tributaries tell a story,
Of work, wounds, or simply years,
Palm lines tell as if divinatory,
Not fate, but of brooding the past,
And something of the weight of glory.

And endless are the words of hands,
Caressing, holding, or raising fists,
Enfolding prayer, clinging to love,
Or cupping a face that ever persists
Questioning, with arms extended high,
Fingers tremble in the morning mists.

Empty cups rest upon a wearied lap,
Tears slip through finger and thumb,
Caught one moment in pores and pleas,
Until nail and skin release the sum
Of breath and pain in bended palms,
Resisting not more what will become.

The sacrament seed,
The true ending.

Memory

There is a place where clouds scramble,
Hungry to swallow vale and wood, and I,
Lost spaces and memories in misty bramble,
Cool as death, as a life lost in a sky,
Without stars.

And in pointless wanderlust, feet shuffle,
Like a vagabond stream without water bed,
Shades of shrines suggest, and voices muffle
A troth, a truth, that has long been unsaid,
Without voice.

Suffer the soul that can't remember its warmth,
Blythe to the longing that leads to praise.
A presence in pace walks through the glomth,
In death, in communion, in life, will raise,
Without scorn.

And a dream or a memory of a place never seen,
Dispels and displaces the ghostly horizon,
And places, and people, as breath into gene,
Retells the story as the grace will emblazon,
With friendship.