The Future Of Hands
All winter
The trees held up their silent hives
As if they mattered.
But on one main street of bars and lights,
I watched a woman who had begged for days
Throw all the coins back, insulted,
Into the crowd,
And then each cheap stone on her necklace,
As if they were confetti
At a bitter wedding,
And then her stained blouse.
I smiled, then, at her dignity.
But when the night came
With only its usual stars to show,
She was applauded and spat on,
Or those passing stepped around her,
Avoiding her body
As if it had become private, or pure.
When the police arrived,
Sniveling about the cold day she had chosen
To strip,
Her face was a brown jewel,
And I knew the hands
Of the police would have to close now,
On this body abandoned to wind,
Just as her hands closed, finally,
On wind that would have nothing
To do with her,
And never had.
*
I know that wind
Had nothing to do with longing.
I have seen that, even in the eyes
Of girls across a lunch counter--
A desire to be anywhere that wasn't
Texas, and waiting on tables--
Their eyes making a pact
With the standing, staring wheat
About to be turned back into the black soil
That spreads everywhere when no one is watching.
And writing this,
I stare at my hands,
Which are the chroniclers of my death,
Which pull me into this paper
Each night, as onto a bed of silk sheets,
And the woman gone.
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poem by Larry Levis
Added by Poetry Lover
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