This Can’t Possibly Be My Hand

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This Can’t Possibly Be My Hand

Written by

David Steven Simon 


This can’t possibly be my hand.

My hand is the tiny one

That tried to weave the infinity of moonlight

Into something tangible

from the launching pad of a white wicker cradle

My hand is the toddler one

That was suffocated by a grown-up’s bigger one

As we darted across

The vast, black tar prairie of Jamaica Avenue

In the middle of a car stampede.

My hand is the kindergarten one that finger painted like Pollock

Cranked a toy ukulele as if I only had minutes to live

Gave life to puppets

Clicked Bic pens like they were mini castanets

Twirled the TV channel knob like a safecracker

And tried to pin the tail on the donkey  who had suffered the tragic loss of his own

My hand is the adolescent one

That longed to touch the warm muffin breast of a willing girl

Who would dance with me

In the shadows of a school dance

As my middle school manhood trembled and throbbed

Like the front row of an Elvis concert.

My hand is the young man’s one

Which was made of young man’s dreams and a young man's blues

My hand is the married one

That twirled my forever barefoot bride 

who became a stranger in just a matter of years.

My hand is the daddy one

That rocked and  burped,

drove the same distance to Mars

and wrapped Christmas presents 

like it was a covert operation for the CIA.

And now

My hand is the grandpa one

The one that strokes my grandson’s bounty of curls

And soothes him until all is lost in the great battle of 

I will not take a nap.  

As he sleeps

Like some dame slipped knock-out drops into his sippy cup

Despite this outsized feeling of grandpa victory

I find myself staring at this hand of mine

That I do not recognize

With its shortened lifeline

As wrinkled as a Shar-Pei

or an unmade bed

And I can’t help but wonder

When the end finally comes,

Who will take it?

Who will want to hold it?

Who will never want to let it



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