Handing Down By Trevor Matthew

She was sitting at my kitchen table looking at her hands. These, she said, are my mother's hands. She had big hands like these. Every time I look at them now I see her, and she held them up in front of me. Bright sun pierced the thinning flesh. Inside I saw the shadows of her bones stand proud, like prisoners, waiting on the margin of a common grave. I looked at my own hands, and they were older knuckled and hardened. I don't know, I said, whose hands these are. I had an uncle who built boats. My second son has thumbs like mine. I have watched him planing wood, the shavings curling softly at his feet as if they were a loving dog. We sat there, looking at our hands wondering if this might be flesh our parents' parents once had used, and this was what 'handing down' means?

Copyright © Trevor Matthew 2010 More work from this poet and others published by Flax can be found here: www.litfest.org/flax.html

This poem can also be read on iPoetry, the poetry app for the iphone/ipod touch available on the Apple iTunes App Store.

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