Squeezing away the Past
after William Stafford’s
“Turn Over Your Hand”
The
lines in your palm
root to unexpected pasts.
No
tone is so subtle
as
those folds. Scared
to
turn over your hand,
too weak to unclench your fist
too often, you have succeeded
in
being only what you thought
you should be. And those lines
you trace in worried meditations,
can only give urge
to
unclench & voice
what you have hidden.
Tom Holmes is a co-founding, co-editor of
Redactions: Poetry & Poetics. He
is author of After Malagueña (FootHills Publishing, 2005), Negative Time (Pudding
House Publications, 2007), and Poetry Assignments: The
Book (Sage Hill Press, 2008).