A Hand

Jane Hirshfield

A hand is not four fingers and a thumb.

Nor is it palm and knuckles, not ligaments or the fat's yellow pillow, not tendons, star of the wristbone, meander of veins.

A hand is not the thick thatch of its lines with their infinite dramas, nor what it has written, not on the page, not on the ecstatic body.

Nor is the hand its meadows of holding, of shaping— not sponge of rising yeast-bread, not rotor pin's smoothness, not ink.

The maple's green hands do not cup the proliferant rain. What empties itself falls into the place that is open.

A hand turned upward holds only a single, transparent question.

Unanswerable, humming like bees, it rises, swarms, departs.

Wade in the Water

Tracy K Smith

for the Geechee Gullah Ring Shouters

One of the women greeted me.

I love you, she said. She didn't

Know me, but I believed her,

And a terrible new ache

Rolled over in my chest,

Like in a room where the drapes

Have been swept back. I love you,

I love you, as she continued

Down the hall past other strangers,

Each feeling pierced suddenly

By pillars of heavy light.

I love you, throughout

The performance, in every

Handclap, every stomp.

I love you in the rusted iron

Chains someone was made

To drag until love let them be

Unclasped and left empty

In the centre of the ring.

I love you in the water

Where they pretended to wade,

Singing that old blood-deep song

That dragged us to those banks

And cast us in. I love you,

The angles of it scraping at

Each throat, shouldering past

The swirling dust motes

In those beams of light

That whatever we now knew

We could let ourselves feel, knew

To climb. O Woods—O Dogs—

O Tree—O Gun—O Girl, run—

O Miraculous Many Gone—

O Lord—O Lord—O Lord—

Is this love the trouble you promised?

The Refuge Box (extract)

Katrina Porteous

At the edge of the Low, the wind blows cold.

A world that is water and not water

Stretches away, reticulate;

Shaken within it, redshank, godwit,

Their scraps and patches of safety shrinking,

Spreading. Miles of sand-flats. Glittering

Streams and ribbons of water, weaving

Earth and sky; between them, the golden

Island, afloat on equivocation,

Or safely grounded there, the tide

Either coming or going around it, the road

Snaking towards it, narrow, human.

You reach the Danger sign, and stop.

You want it, that Island, stretched out like a ship

Ashore on its saltings, adrift in a sea

So blue and endless, you’d think the sky

Had swallowed it up, or else had fallen

Smack down into its own reflection.

Out from the causeway, over the sand,

Guideposts narrow towards the Island,

The mirror-image of their own

Vanishing – an invitation.

The Slakes answer the sky’s question:        

           Blue?

Blue.

Now, will you

Step out into an unknown element?

Ich Am From Irelande

Anonymous, 14th CE. A joyous invitation...

I am of Ireland And of the holy land Of Ireland.

Good sir, I pray you, For holy charity Come and dance with me In Ireland.

Tree, tree dry and green

Federico Garcia Lorca. I did go to Seville, Cordoba and Granada :-)

The girl with the pretty face is out picking olives. The wind, playboy of towers, grabs her around the waist. Four riders passed by on Andalusian ponies, with blue and green jackets and big, dark capes. 'Come to Cordoba, muchacha.' The girl won't listen to them. Three young bullfighters passed, slender in the waist, with jackets the color of oranges and swords of ancient silver. 'Come to Sevilla, muchacha.' The girl won't listen to them. When the afternoon had turned dark brown, with scattered light, a young man passed by, wearing roses and myrtle of the moon. 'Come to Granada, inuchacha.' And the girl won't listen to him. The girl with the pretty face keeps on picking olives with the grey arm of the wind wrapped around her waist. Tree, tree dry and green.