Lonnie Hicks (www.lonniehicks.com / Chicago Ill)

First Love's Touch,
mutual gathering was only through them,
our Hands.

We poets celebrate
Hearts and Souls;
Love too wields magic,
but neglect too often
those stalwart two-
the human hands-
we're birth'd with.

Entwined most
in our Corporeal Destinies
yet hands occupy
in the Pantheon of Graces
a position lower than should be.

Consider birth's first
is a touching hand.

First our eyes open
then
we are lifted by them.

Is not reaching for love
first with these twins?

Was not my First Love
first touched by them?

Did we not, we two, hold hands
along the heart-way walkways?

Did not these two first wave
sweet hellos and partings?

What poet's mind could word
without them?

Alas, too, it was these two
which fluttered dismissively
signaling
First Love was leaving.

At death's bed
the last we reach
for nurse, loved ones
or darlings,
with be with these two hands,
when from this world departing.

Is not electricity
generated by them
in the touching of our bodies?

Are not hands reaching on the Grecian Urn
expressing love's startings,
it's yawlings and yearnings?

I will die
as we all will-
its hands that will pray for me.

Coffin bound
I will lay,
my two hands crossing.

I am touched by loving hands
from birth
to Death's Regarding.

All my life these two ambassadors
convey
sweet touches
to me and from me
to others.

The tear of child
is reached by these
and Child Worlds mended.

Lover, I
have only these
to express what
what my Heart says
Love Is.

In the end
cry for them too:
Fluttering Twins,
unsung,
ungraced,
each hand-
perforce
will reach out
one to each-
one floating flower to another.