This lovely hand of yours

 

The fine warmth and pulse of it – beauty gets

a sounding in the oldest skin, it takes

the flutterings of veins and chimes them through.

The mind slows and alters – as in the grove

of midnight you place a hand on top of mine

then sleep, full-upright in your blue-winged chair,

TV on, the weekend’s busy-ness – a grand-

daughter’s wedding – now over.  Dark clocks round,

intimate and mute.  Inside the space that

two hands make, I have you travelling with the stars,

your palm – enclosure of will and deed – lit

with the scripts of all your being and becoming,

the long, long story of your time.

In this gift of moment, I find myself

humming and whole, stopped at the centre

of whatever your hand has held,

between the moon’s abundance and the sun’s.

 

©Jo Thorpe This Thin Now, HoopLa Series, Mākaro Press 2018

 

 

 

 

 

Jo Thorpe was born in Wellington in 1948. She grew up in Gisborne, and graduated from Auckland University before settling in Wellington. Jo is the author of two previous poetry collections: Len & Other Poems (Steele Roberts Aotearoa, 2003, written in part as a response to the work of Len Lye and Roger Horrocks’ biography of the visionary kinetic artist); in/let Steele Roberts, 2010.

Jo has a masters in creative writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters, Victoria University. She taught Dance History at the NZ School of Dance in Wellington (2003-15), danced with the Crows Feet Dance Collective (2002-15) and has written dance criticism for a variety of publications.

Jo has three daughters, five grandchildren and now lives in Turanganui-a-Kiwa/Gisborne.