| InterBoard Poetry Competition | |
HANDS AT FORTY
G. Lupino
(The Critical Poet)
Men often rediscover at forty,
deep in mirrors while shaving,
the faces of their fathers.
But I see in the warm amnion
of sinks, soap and running water
my father’s hands.
God gave him the deft, uncalloused
hands of a pianist, but not the ear;
long, sinewy fingers,
the hills and valleys of his knuckles
abraded and bleeding,
desiccated by endless days
of latex gloves donned
for deliveries, pap smears and hysterectomies
and by all that soap and scrubbing--
thirty times a day at least.
How reptilian they looked!
with their polygonal scales
and linear cracks,
like twin lizards crawling
on my mother’s shoulders
when he used to caress the nape of her neck,
fingers slithering through her hair.
But for a week or so,
every month and a half,
he would carefully file his nails
into unscratching, semi-lunar curves
to begin a process of nightly ablutions,
slathering on lotions and emollients,
sleeping with sweat socks over his hands,
until by Saturday
they were smooth and ready.
And then he would drive to spend
the weekend out of state
with his mistress.
Judge David Biespiel’s comments: “Another poem paying homage to a master, this time Donald Justice--it reads like a detail of his masterful lyric, ‘Men at Forty.’”
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