Robert Green (09.05.57)
A Lifetime In Your Hands
Baby.
On the floor they lay
Not a wrinkle or crease to save
Little hands do wave
Wanting to play
Young child.
In dirt and muck
Hands still mild and soft
More by youth than luck
Plays the young child hands aloft
Teenager.
Learning in school
For peers appear cool
In paint and ink
Their hands do stink
Young adult.
Now working hard
Sweat and toil
midday sun, mad
Hands now a trowel
Middle age.
Hands hard and worn
Some cut, sworn
Holds a child
Strong and mild
50 - 60
Wrinkles appear
Fingers and thumbs
On the rear
Liver spots like speckled crumbs
Old age (ish)
Wrinkled and lined
Courted and dined
Etched in their story of life
Sprinkled with some strife
End of time.
Transparent and Boney
Face hard set, maybe lonely
Hands wave a sigh
Soon to say goodbye
RG
Poet's Notes about The Poem
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The writer has traced age through hands describing it's stages.Interestingly hands start from a wave to play to wave to a sigh, a bit of drama but the whole life is a drama with different acts, penned thoughtfully.
Like this Robert, rather be at the beginning of the poem rather than the end though! ! !
A modern version of the all time great imagery of Shakespeare's celebrated 7 stages in Man's life...
but irony is...these days Death doesn't wait for all the stages
to be completed....Here the effect of passing time is shown through HANDS...this is new....