Hands Awake
Hands awaken! Speak out! Answer to sacred shouts,
subterranean whispering, to stars above rooftops—
thread sunlit branches with the chattering of a thousand leaves.
If fluxes and urgencies of confusion or death
should drawn you into your self-box, I say,
remember when one constructed self-prison fell away.
However you helped this forward,
do more of the same.
Be rain-hands, weeping, steeped in earth fragrance.
Be fingers in blossom, faces turning upward,
loves innumerable, rough-cut bedazzled—
unafraid to be splayed open.
Be pocketed hands, released to the welcoming wind—
multiplying there in mid-air,
riding the four directions.
Be hands of smoke and fire, descending and ascending like ragged bird-song—
effulgent, double-charged with surprise
and now even with mock surprises.
Start at the beginning, where you are.
Don’t be satiate with loll-lolling
recede wave’s tide, retreat back and back
into yourselves, until grown utterly intellectual and lumpish!
Now, you Human Being—you come awake also!
Sweep the furnishings from table. Upend the table lawlessly.
Bring the muscular, fleshy, feminine against the masculine and muscular.
Bring the masculine to the feminine. Bring friend to enemy,
estranged neighbor to the confidant. In a dance of pressing hands,
let subtle conversation play.
Ring all the tiny bells.
Stir the King and Queen of Remembrance.
In over-arching restraint, holding back one iota, so pure notes sound—
bring sunburst, sphere and harmony.
Make your entire body a listening board
forming therein—tender shape around which love
seed unfolds infinite spaces and then…
Spring awake! All to better dreaming
where hope and faith are undashed, not this dying.
O, hear me now! Hands, every which one of you,
with every human—never again sleep,
never abandon!
Copyright © Lansing Day | Year Posted 2013
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