The Unbidden Guest, That Miser Age Poem by Lynn W. Petty

The Unbidden Guest, That Miser Age

Have you seen her hands, knurled and crooked with age?
Translucent skin accenting blue-black veins;
White tendon cords contrasting through the spots
Of dark-brown on the backs of her old hands?
They had been once the strength of our household.
They molded us into a family core.

The mastic of their love had bound that core,
Performing endless tasks, when young of age.
Without apparent weariness, household
Concerns were done, while only shadowed veins
Conveyed fatigue beneath her eyes. Her hands,
Saw all the dabs and daubs, all dirty spots.

They dusted, swept and scrubbed unwanted spots.
No motion lost in their intent when core
Of principle involved. Persuasive hands
In their resolve. Yet, in my tender age
Of childhood ills, before those blue-black veins,
Their touch appeased and stilled the whole household.

The home was left, no thought for such household
Labor, when fever, with those itching spots,
Had pulsed with heated flow, throughout my veins.
Medicinal was their caress, the core
Of youthful convalescence. Restive age
Has slowed the winging of those birdlike hands.

They lack the strength, but not desire. Those hands,
Were like swift eagle wings throughout household
Routines. She sits immersed in her old age,
She waits, while passing flocks, as distant spots,
Take migratory flight away. Her core
Is not a legacy of ebbing veins,

But golden recollections from deep veins
Of unmined memories, as holding hands
Exposed the ore of our familial core.
How vacuous. Now, barren, our household.
As Time had hoarded coin of youth, those spots
Revealed that Time is but, that miser Age.

A woman's hands can consecrate the core
Of meanest household tasks. She tithes her life,
Exchanged for blue-black veins and spots of age.