Today she doesn’t know how to hold hands.
I rest my fingers under her wrinkled palm,
taking note of the dents where wedding bands
once sang a continuous marriage psalm.
Bony and spotty with advancing age,
her fingers tremble at winter’s approach:
not the snowfall that builds a season’s cage
but the railroad cars where we all ride coach,
a skeletal conductor at the switch —-
he traded in the horse and harvest scythe
for something that rushes at fevered pitch
on the downslope; I watch it snake and writhe
huffing and puffing toward the higher ground;
riding so hard, she makes no speech nor sound.
