Hands in the Dark
I haven’t got my mother’s hands.
Her fingers were like ivory candles
that lit piano keys with a kindled flame.
Memory links to an ache in my chest.
I don’t remember those hands
in tenderness.
They must have lifted me from sleep,
wiped away tears,
bandaged a scraped knee.
Recall allows me passage into many things,
but I cannot remember
her caress.
I had a fascination
with her slender wrists,
tiny blue veins crisscrossed underneath,
a black leather watch band
stretched in a perfect circle around fine bones,
the perfume of bergamot
splashed skin the colour of latte.
At night when I toss in restless dregs
I sometimes feel her touch.
- Barbara De Franceschi 2018
Barbara De Franceschi is an arid zone poet from Broken Hill. Besides three collections of poetry her work has been published widely in Australia, in other countries and on-line. Barbara has served as ‘artist-in-residence’ for the NSW University Department of Rural Health to promote Art in Health for undergraduate health-science students.
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