Language of Hands

Their hands might wave birdwings back to me
And beckon me to Lotuseaters’ Lands
But here is a man whose hands are tied
To a mast waving a skull grinning with the tide

I did learn human words, tried to read human eyes
And some stories start with a glance and in summed-up three words
Then it meanders to mistrust and finds alleys to mean less
I learned only words can lie and eyes can pretend

But those language of hands, pristine and naïve
Never unfolded untruth, never conveyed what it never meant
Hands which called, hands which tried, fists which fought, fingers fleeting light
The language of hands in the daydim of babble and false-eyelash-nights…

The whisper of a touch tiptoeing up the neck
The firmness of a grip when the foothold breaks
Or a hand in a hand, poetry in pavements
Or the coldness of a limb of a weeping estranged in my bed

Or the hand in a hand, in some abstruse solemn pledge
Or a hand in surrender, admitting emptiness
Or a story which begins when nervous fingers smile and kiss
And all those mute hands whose kind words I missed

The language of hands, like the sounds of the waves
Never stooped to a lie, never concealed what they meant
A life is half-emptied, histories spread in evening skies
I only learned lying words and misunderstood with my eyes.

A quickly written poem triggered by a comment by TheRadicalAncient, and therefore featuring a link to her blog (and aptly so).

Image Courtesy: Empty by Pablo Montanez.

Somehow related posts:
The Way They Touched
A Blank Little Post