A book of learned scholarship, <br />open in my hands, at the first page… <br /> <br />and then I saw, to the right of it, <br />my thumb nail…and marvelled – <br /> <br />at its perfection, at its beauty, <br />and at my own ignorance – <br /> <br />which strangely, was all part <br />of that same beauteous perfection… <br /> <br />the thumbnail: curved, as a hollowed claw, <br />the curve I knew would give it added strength; <br /> <br />sitting as secure as any child of love, <br />within the folded mystery of skin and flesh; <br /> <br />three-coloured: pale rising moon <br />emerging from its secret nail-bed <br />as some goddess might appear; <br /> <br />then the subtle shades of rosy pink, <br />hinting at blood serving readily <br />the nail’s demands; <br /> <br />finally, the top (long, shaped, as best to gouge <br />potato’s eyes, and other kitchen tasks…) : <br /> <br />I looked at it, and marvelled: <br />the whole creation, conspiring to present <br />this perfect thing… <br /> <br />Fifty years and more ago, I wrote, <br />in those years when I despaired <br />of making sense of so-called ‘adult’ world, <br /> <br />sitting at the desk, to find myself <br />before setting off to earn my daily bread, <br /> <br />I wrote – in lines that never quite linked up <br />their visioned moments into complete poems, <br /> <br />on white and yearning pages like a life unwrit: <br />‘we know not our own finger ends…’ <br /> <br />The wrinkled thumb and finger – they have lasted; <br />the holy mystery - praise God - remains.<br /><br />Michael Shepherd<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/thumbnails-and-finger-ends/
