Big-Handed Men - Oct 26 2020

 

Big-Handed Men

Oct 26 2020

You can tell by the hands.

Hands with thick callused skin

tanned almost to leather.

Hands with their history written

in the ridge-like scars

that could be some arcane hieroglyph.

Farmers always have red meaty hands

accustomed to work.

Do they self-select,

big-handed men

attracted to manual labour?

Or are hands like this the result?

I'm self-conscious about mine,

which spend their time at a keyboard

or gripping a pen

and are thin and mottled and soft.

Shaking hands with men like these

I find myself lost

in their strong manly grip,

a cold fish

in the warm mouth of a grizzly.

I especially notice them on brisk winter days

working out in the elements

oblivious to cold.

Boisterous men

joking and swearing

and wearing quilt-lined coveralls

that are so well-worn

they could stand on their own.

Whose steel-toed boots, size 13 or 14

so deeply imprint the snow

it looks like a tribe of Sasquatch

had been trampling the yard.

And only they could wear a knit stocking cap

with the casual panache

of eye-blacked commandos.

When the farmer talks

standing in a field

or shooting the breeze in the local feed store

he seems not to know what to do with them,

hanging awkwardly at his side

or stiffly wedged

into big pants pockets.

The hands of a doer

that are only at ease

when there's work to be done.

And resting on the table

in the predawn dark

waiting for home fries and eggs

and oatmeal porridge

they look like a bear cub's oversized paws

as he fidgets with his piddling fork.