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Softer Shelf
Please hold my restive hands aloft
and shelve them there like freighters docked.
They'll lock into, and carry you,
and bear the heft so gladly too,
but soon profess to their intent:
to grasp, caress; with your consent.
They're not such tools a fool might wield,
however boorish in appeal --
their texture comes from gripping that
which grinds down skin and bone and fat:
the handles fixed beneath a head
which strikes the gold newborn from lead.
Fallen, sullen and taciturn;
they clench to fists with each new spurn,
and learn to curl amongst themselves
in pockets sewn like dry, cloth wells.
But when a shape is shuffled past
that waggles well beyond its caste,
the silly things can't help but stir
and wish for contact, pressed and firm,
against that which has just occurred:
an ass that's worth ten bridges, burned.
