Father of the Big Hands

FATHER OF THE BIG HANDS

I am remembering my father
of the big hands,
the ones that held me back
from disaster
that time
I stepped off the curb
into a New York City street.
I was going to cross
when his hand held me
from the rushing car, it was so big
it covered my whole chest, the chicken
ribs of my chest, from neck to belly,
from side to side, it held me the way
basketball players palm the ball, I was
completely in his grip
as he held me back from death,
from certain, stupid death.

That was his left hand. With
his right hand he held me pinned
to the seat of his VW bug, one
of the many he wrecked, in the
days before seatbelts, when he had
to slam on the brakes, his hand, his big
big hand, that spanned my whole body,
he held back the forces of inertia, he
defied science and all its laws of motion,
his strength was the strength of fatherhood,
strength forgotten in his slow
booze suicide suddenly risen once again.
I still feel his hand there,
the way the forces of
nature conspired against me, the way he
and his big hand defied that universe
to keep me whole.

These were the same hands that held beer cans,
the hands that held cigarettes,
the lost and broken hands that could not
create. Even in death
his hands were big, as though
to carry oneself into the grave one must have
hands
as big as his, as strong and wide,
hands that remembered their ancestry
in broken bones, flint chisels, knives
the size of whole bodies.


Richard Smyth

Posted over on Anabiosis Press