Poem of the Week CXLVI

(Poem on an accidental xerox of his hand)

In honor of my birthday tomorrow, another John Stone. I offer a special thanks to a dear love of mine, who makes poetry come alive...

Poem on an Accidental Xerox of Her Hand
John Stone
for Delese Wear

Dermatoglyphics is the fancy name
for the gentle science of reading palms

or, for that matter, soles: anywhere
genetics takes its chances and leaves lines.

Fortune-tellers make whole lives of such
cutaneous meanderings, of course,

taking the intersections of the world
as each presents itself, heart in hand.

I could have used some palmistry today:
A woman in Ohio, sending poems,

xeroxed not only the poet's finest frenzy,
but also, at the upper left, her hand.

That is the wondrous way the world may happen--
you start to do one thing and do another.

Up to now I haven't read the poem.
I've only sat here hoping to say sooth,

trying to glean a message from this map,
life line, love line, shape of her own sweet time.

La Ci Darem La Mano hums through my head.
For having seen their tracery in the air,

five slender ministers practicing their Braille,
I swear by the metacarpal hills of fortune

I would have know these fingers anywhere.