The Child’s Hand Poem by Joseph S. Josephides

The child's hand doesn’t know that
it’s a hand; it dreams that one day
it will become a flower or a bird.

Was bought to be fixed on shoulder
of a one-handed rich boy.
Now it looks like a blind reptile,
has a triangular head of a worm,
soft claws, muddy scales
the hand touches, hovers, back, outward
it counts coins, pushes buttons,
has grains with small volcanoes,
it suffocates in a luxury glove
and doesn’t caress or writes,
neither is a flower nor a bird.

The rich boy dies; while we bury him
we become speechless seeing in the soil
the child’s hand as Hercules’ when was kid;
it strangles two snakes, as if it takes
revange for the loss of his own Paradise.


© JosephJosephides