The Mortician Speaks of Hands

We don’t see many pampered hands
around here; work-rough and laundry-red,
calluses and swollen knuckles
all tell stories of lives hard lived.

I like to leave their hands
for last when I can spend time
with them, when I can stroke
lotions into dry palms and cream
delicate circles into paper-thin,
freckled skin. I trim split
and thickened nails, buff them
and help their pearly half-moons
rise from their beds.

I look at the heart lines, how deep
and strong they lie as they take
all I offer; how they deepen
between hardened pads. I lay
them gently on white satin;
softer than they’ve ever known.
They rest, look loved, lie still
as if they had never curled to fists.

The Bookbinder Speaks of Reading

He’ll make journeyman soon: he’s done his seven
years and he’s a quick study, best apprentice I ever had
for skill.  His glaire is always well stood and applied
so it neither cracks nor fails to grasp the gold leaf;
his hand sure on the tooling and his tools never scorch
the moroccan.  From the very first, he never mismatched
signatures on a quarto and his stroke with the bone folder
always leaves a sharp and perfect crease.

It’s the reading that spoils him. I’ve told him, time
and time again, You can’t keep your eye for the binding
if you read what’s within.  His drawings are pure and correct,
his lozenges and ovals always agreeably proportioned
but he will not hold to what is suitable for the book in his press.
He knows well enough that blind tooling is for the religious,
the heavy venetian tools for serious works and the azure
line Groliers for the light–the romances, the ladies’ works.
Even a child can grasp the sense of using a shell or bird
tool for natural history, of fitting the emblem to the subject.
Yet he asks why? when I stop him using blind tooling on a study
of trees.  I tell him it’s tradition and he says it’s about meaning.