Re-Seeing
This morning I saw my hand and marveled—
the smoothness of the finger pads
like sandstone eroded by centuries of wind,
the wrinkled cords between the pointer
and the thumb like cottonwood roots rising
out of the ground, the fine wrinkles in the knuckles
like thin braided strands of spider silk,
the splotchy spots of white below the plush heel,
like small puffs of morning clouds in the desert.
This hand that has held weeping children
and planted beets, scraped cat vomit from the carpet
and carried river stones to build a home. I stared
at this hand I have known my whole life and wept
for the sheer miracle of hand, how even the most
familiar, intimate parts of ourselves, the parts we take
most for granted, have the most to teach us about
gratefulness, about how to see and meet the world.
—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
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Hey friends, I will be away for four days, teaching remotely in the glorious San Juans at High Camp Hut with no cell, no wifi, and lots of spaciousness. I’ll be back with poems on Sunday night. In the meantime, if you are jonesing for poems, you can find them on my blog (a backlog of poems from the last 12 years or so): A Hundred Falling Veils.
Or, you can subscribe to the Ritual app on your phone and there I read a poem every day (twice!) and offer ways to think about it and also optional writing invitations. You can find that on your phone here (there is a small fee to subscribe): The Poetic Path