Hands On

Painting by Gary Presson


Hands On

Michelangelo loved to sketch, sculpt
and paint hands, for he understood
that even his own genius
never would have surfaced
without those opposable thumbs.

Picasso transferred
his cubist perspectives
from cortex to canvas
with big-knuckled peasant hands.

What a marvel of engineering
we dangle unceremoniously
at the bony end of our wrists;
hands
that
built the pyramids,
planted an American flag on the moon,
thrust skyscrapers into the clouds,
cared for poppy fields and bonsai trees,
clear cut trees and then reforested them,
demolished much of history
and then reconfigured it—
but what if we had been fashioned
like the dolphins,
with intellect and soul
to spare, but with no hands
to change the world we inhabit;
living by grace alone,
by the charity of nature
or its capriciousness?

Glenn Buttkus May 2010