The Storytellers

My hands lie still
And yet they still tell stories
Episodes of a live lived
Neither poorly nor with constant excellence
But a life lived none the less

They tell stories of good deeds and stupidity
Mistakes made
And debts paid
I regret none of it

Both are freckled from the ferocious sun
I am wary of the harsh rays
That pull melanin from my cells
And tattoo my body

No doubt some grizzled medical professional
Will some day gouge
A cancerous mutation from one of my hands
I will try to avoid that
If I can

While freckles denote too much sun
The white freckles under my nails
Denote a lack of something else
Zinc, apparently
All kinds of snakes 
Have tried to sell me a cure
And I bought none of them

They tell stories these hands
The scar on my right thumb
From leap frogging a concrete pylon in Dunedin
Drunk of course

The thumb nail is slightly retracted
From when keratin met the meat slicer  
While I was teaching the new guy
How to safely slice reconstituted turkey

My thumb still peels 
From the dishwasher chemicals
Chemical dermatitis
Three years on
The myth still owns me

My index and middle
Bare the almost invisible scars
Of an aluminium door closing on them
When I was nine years old
I sometime wonder
What would have happened
If I had lost those fingers

My fourth finger and pinky?
Boring
But they played a part
In making sure I forget

The back of my hand
A constellation of freckles
On a new skin canvas
Bombing a small hill on four small wheels
And eating shit on stones
But the main thing is
I saved all the beers

My left hand
The gimp
Don't throw too good
And plays lousy guitar
It's quite good at clapping I guess
Or maybe it's all the right

No
It's a good hand
It holds the page as I now write
It holds the fish as I sever flesh from bone
It holds my second beer
Because sometimes one is not enough
It holds the branch as I saw wood
To keep my friends warm

The one scar my left hand holds
Gifted by a barbed wire fence
And I ran through the forest
And shared my blood with the earth

It's the hand that touched my grandfather
As he lay in state
And I knew he was gone
For he was wax

It's the hand that touched her last
As she walked through the gates
And I miss her
But it can never be undone

It's the hand that cradles
My unborn child's head
As I hold and are held
By love

My left hand holds
My grandfathers signet ring
Manu Forte
The Strong Hand
Almost seventy years old
It is worn because it has lived life

And that's all I can ask for
At the end when I am wax
That I am worn
Because that will mean
That I have lived