Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt suggested taking a line from someone else’s poem to use as a starting point for your own. What an interesting exercise! So naturally I decided to combine it with the Poetic Asides prompt to write an “exercise” poem. ** The opening line comes from “A Hand”  by Jane Hirshfield.

Hand Exercises 

 

A hand is not the thick thatch of its lines

with their infinite dramas,**

or the hardness, length or polish of its nails.

 

A hand is not defined by everything it’s touched,

or everything it’s wished to.

 

A hand is a tool, for work fine or heavy,

and that it feels makes the work

possible, wonderful or unbearable.

 

And it shouldn’t take practice,

yet it does

to reach it out, offer it up,

to lift, pull, hold,

let the purpose in the fingers

overrule the jaded brain

when it chides:

you alone can’t make a difference.