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What my Hands Want to Say
by Philip Asaph
When, as now in bed, I reach to touch her face,
I wish my hands were lighter, softer,
something other than what they are, the hard hands of a laborer,
and of one who has lived too near the street,
where what is gentle becomes suspended,
like the seeds at the heart of an apple--
this tart green apple I hold before her mouth.
Even when I wipe the juice from her chin,
as she stares through my eyes, seeing everything within,
I doubt my outer hand is capable of expressing
what the inner one intends.
And so I hope her cheek, her temple and her hair
will hear what my stunned touch
is stumbling to say, that her nose and right eyebrow will know
that when I am touching her like this,
she reaches the place in me where I am finally free
of selfishness, a creature surrounded by the field of her.
And though the sound that comes
from my throat is a growl, I want her to somehow sense
that beside her with a tending love
in this body that would defend her to its death,
a being is seeing her being
and hearing the silence in each of her eyes
as clearly as the sounds of Om
and Amen.