Your Hand

I've been filling in for a high school art teacher for two weeks. We are starting an assignment I call, 'Self Portrait Of Your Hand.' We've been working on techniques of perspective and color values to make an object look three dimensional, and will use them to create our hand portrait.

We can meditate on our hand as we draw and color. How amazing it is! What will you do with your hand today? How will your hand mold a new world? By holding a paint brush, a scalpel, a hammer? By making mudras? By stroking the fur of you dearest animal friend? By touching and blessing the sick? Whose hand picked the fruit and vegetables you will eat tonight? Be grateful for that hand too.

Did you know that the earliest self portraits and signatures are hands, printed on the wall of caves? Some are 40,000 years old in Spanish caverns. Similar hand portraits have been found in caves of Borneo, Indonesia. Below is a link to a National Geographic article on these cave hands. They still reach out to us, as our hands reach out to the unborn, the un-conceived, the unknown. Here is a poem about hands from my book, "The Nectar Of This Breath."

ODE TO YOUR HANDS

I honor your hands, those skillful bones,
tendons, knuckles, knobs:
you awe me, tool-holder!
I bow to you, my own hands inept,
little accomplishing, hardly able
even to fondle themselves in prayer.
You who tie knots and make shelters,
you who reach into birth blood and turn
the breached foal's head in the womb
of the mare, woodcarver, carpenter,
thrower of pots, blacksmith, diamond
cutter, pruner of fruit trees;
you who swing bats or sink birdies,
loaf kneader, roller of noodles, whirler
of pizza dough; calligrapher allowing
clouds to stain the silken sumi-e,
expressing mountain and bamboo
with wrists and fingertips, I honor you!
Squirting milk into a bucket
from the goat's teat, or fingering
the Uileann pipes as you gaze into
the eyes of Danu, inward Mother
of green Eire; and you, the lonely
cosmetician with your palette of faces
I do not forget, nor you, foot masseuse,
nor plumber, chiropractor, nurse
practitioner laying hands on the sick
at midnight, unknown to the doctor,
or bandaging the leaky toilet pipes,
equally skillful; you the medic, binder
of wounds on the battlefield;
and the veterinarian who skillfully
removes a rubber duck
from the belly of a Labrador;
nor do I forget the greasy engineer
in the rib cage of a tramp steamer,
or the star-fluent navigator
in oceanic night, on the bridge
with his sextant and compass.
I honor the breaker of rusted bolts,
and you who changed my mother's tire
on the highway; you who somehow
lay brick walls in a straight line, or play
the steel-stringed guitar with tough
delicate fingers; poodle groomer,
I honor your hands, sword-wielder,
marksman, backhoe driver, shaker
of the shaman's rattle at the moon.
I honor the deft diaper changer
and the mixer of cocktails;
the Ayurvedic pulse-reader,
the miner with infernal drill;
distiller of barley malt, brewer,
grafter of grape vines; you who bless
tinctures and ointments, crushing
flowers into homeopathic salve;
all of you equally adept, I honor
the handyman and midwife, builder
of campfires, mudra weaver of fingers
in your Himalayan shrine, and you
love-maker also, most dexterous.
With my hands, that make nothing,
I offer this poem.


LINK to National Geographic article on 40,000 year old hands.