Daddy's Hands

Standing at daddy's bedside before our last good-bye, I was captivated again by his hands. As a child, I had been amazed by the size, the thickness of his palms and fingers. No one else had hands like his. I used to wonder how he was able to make them "work." Still he extracted splinters and tied shoelaces with those thick fingers with ease; like they were the hands of a small child and he was picking dainty flowers - or so it seemed.

Near death those hands just lay there at his side; motionless yet somehow beckoning to be held; and when held, they were as soft as fresh warm dough.

Daddy's Hands
baseball mitt palms
and plump sausage fingers
dirtied and hardened by
construction labor;
a hard day's work
born of necessity

extentions of a creative mind -
for crafts, repairs and gardens that
needed plowing and tending

rarely raised in anger;
not for disciplining,
those hands

In loving memory:
George Ashley (1930 - 2009)