Your Palm

Today's ordinary thing to write about: your palm. There's a wonderful poem by William Stafford, Turn Over Your Hand, with the lines:

“nobody’s voice / can find so tiny a message
as comes / across your hand”

What is the message you find when you turn over your hand?

2 comments:

  1. TO DREAM OF SKATING ON ICE

    “To dream of skating on ice means
    satisfaction with a current project.”
    --Dictionary of Dreams

    Amidst white groves
    Inside a lilac tree
    I gaze at airy flights across a frozen lake.

    Like soaring birds
    We are all of us, skating on ice.
    Spanning circuits
    Dense, ring-shaped,
    Effortless,
    Dazzling as a diamond dream
    Before the break.

    Beneath the brightness, I see a shadow
    And the semblance watches me.
    A shrill remembrance,
    The impervious stare of quartz:
    A trade-off between tomorrow and the past.

    The break below
    faces a ruptured skyline.
    Its path
    Squalls out for meaning.
    The meaning is the sea.
    I seize the mirror and the likeness mirrors me.

    Beneath the brightness,
    a shadow floats
    Under a pond of ice.
    Freezing up in time and space
    I drift inside the memory
    of a winter’s whorl,
    Headed to where I came from.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Istvan,

    Thank you for the poem - a beautiful account of the creative process.

    ReplyDelete

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