Missing Eve - May 25 2026

 

Missing Eve

May 25 2026

I am not an artist.

I work in words

not colour, shape, and line.

At best, I'm still a toddler 

drawing stick-men

with pencil arms and pneumatic heads

beneath a smiling sun;

the unspoiled world

of an innocent child. 

But while I find it all hard

I’ve been told the hardest by far

is the human hand.

You’d think 5 digits and a palm

would be simple enough,

even for dabblers

in the visual arts.

Would it be bold to see this as telling

   . . . even as metaphor?

Because the hand

is no mere extremity

but how we encounter the world.

How we reach out and touch,

clasp and hold,

make passionate love.

How even in darkness, we feel our way,

and how the blind go eyeless

the lost are led.

How a newborn on her mother’s chest 

grasps reflexively,

snuggling into her warmth

and feeling her hand

envelope him there. 

How we give a hand, and lend one.

How hand-to-hand and hand-to-heart

we solemnly declare. 

And how we reach down,

proffering a hand-up

to those in need.

Even the space we give

to this small body part

is telling,

the homunculus’ huge hands

 — the hunchbacked ogre

that is the brain’s funhouse mirror

version of us.

Its fingers and thumb

like the real ones

bristling with nerves

and pulsing with sensation;

humongous tongue

busting out of its mouth;

and ample manhood

that’s basic anatomy

but still seems pornographic.

I think of the ceiling

of the Sistine chapel,

and of Michelangelo

on his back

on a hard wooden scaffold

painting his masterpiece;

the hand of God

reaching languidly out

to an unsuspecting Adam,

leaning back

in all his manly splendour. 

So the Creation of Man

begins with touch.

The first man

brought to life 

and sent out into the world,

granted free will

and on his own.

In God’s image, but ungodly.

An innocent feeling his way

in an unspoiled Eden

as an innocent sun shines cheerfully down.  

And how all alone, his one great desire

is for someone to touch

and, in turn

be touched by. 

I originally called this Missing Eve. Which I still feel ambivalent about. I think it would have provided a satisfying sense of closure in  to the poem. But it also anticipates I'm the unexpected turn the poem takes, which I suspect might have given too much away. 

In the meantime, “desire” is a powerful word. So the title I went with does the basic work of a good title: it entices the reader in.

Below is a representation of the human homunculus, demonstrating the highly enervated tongue and hands, which take up such a disproportionate amount of space in the brain's cortex:

I dislike ending a line with a preposition (or pronoun, for that matter), let alone an entire poem! Not because there’s any grammatical prohibition, but because it’s a weak word in a privileged place. Yet I think by works here. First, it resonates with desire, so kind of cinches the ending shut, the way a rhyming couplet does. Second, it’s open-ended, seeming to trail off unfinished, and so invites the reader to complete the implied question: by whom?  

If you doubted my lack of artistic ability, perhaps this will convince you. My masterpiece: