Father's Hands

This past week I took a Poetry workshop with Bill Brown. It was heart wrenching but inspirational, this is the product of one of his prompts. I thought it only appropriate to share it here for #oneshotwednesday

Rough and ragged,

drywall hanging, putty stained,

patching cracks and holes,

mending the places where people dwell.

The cross shaped scar,

the ring less finger,

both evidence that God saved him once.

On my back with soft skin

brown or olive, on my white skin,

fingers laced

we are shades of one another.

Skin of the migrant worker,

native teacher,

blue collar American hands,

with Spanish dna instilling courage 

grasping at equality

contending the social bullishness of

injustice, prejudice and ignorance.

Those hands built the house

where my soul dwells.

This hodge-podge,

grew as the children came,

then grew some more

house of spirit and bone.

Hands that wrote

empty-handed legacy of bull-shit

with the permission to refuse it,

and craft my own.

Dark hands of my nightmares

releasing me to

a drowning world

in the amniotic fluid

that gave birth to me.

Hands with a voice

when mouth was silent

Shh… don’t speak

just close the door.

Grandfather’s hands now,

aged yet strong,

worn but useful

wise, and disciplined

casts fishing lines and

dripping sticks of marshmallows

into the fire consuming childhood.

The bearer of

hands that uplift the children

that thrust through the

bone of his bone,

flesh of his flesh,

daughter of the wild one.