For months my hand was sealed off <br />in a tin box. Nothing was there but the subway railings. <br />Perhaps it is bruised, I thought, <br />and that is why they have locked it up. <br />You could tell time by this, I thought, <br />like a clock, by its five knuckles <br />and the thin underground veins. <br />It lay there like an unconscious woman <br />fed by tubes she knew not of. <br /> <br />The hand had collapse, <br />a small wood pigeon <br />that had gone into seclusion. <br />I turned it over and the palm was old, <br />its lines traced like fine needlepoint <br />and stitched up into fingers. <br />It was fat and soft and blind in places. <br />Nothing but vulnerable. <br /> <br />And all this is metaphor. <br />An ordinary hand - just lonely <br />for something to touch <br />that touches back. <br />The dog won't do it. <br />Her tail wags in the swamp for a frog. <br />I'm no better than a case of dog food. <br />She owns her own hunger. <br />My sisters won't do it. <br />They live in school except for buttons <br />and tears running down like lemonade. <br />My father won't do it. <br />He comes in the house and even at night <br />he lives in a machine made by my mother <br />and well oiled by his job, his job. <br /> <br />The trouble is <br />that I'd let my gestures freeze. <br />The trouble was not <br />in the kitchen or the tulips <br />but only in my head, my head. <br /> <br />Then all this became history. <br />Your hand found mine. <br />Life rushed to my fingers like a blood clot. <br />Oh, my carpenter, <br />the fingers are rebuilt. <br />They dance with yours. <br />They dance in the attic and in Vienna. <br />My hand is alive all over America. <br />Not even death will stop it, <br />death shedding her blood. <br />Nothing will stop it, for this is the kingdom <br />and the kingdom come.<br /><br />Anne Sexton<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-touch-7/
