The Sunday Poem: The Man With Wooden Hands
This was a man with wooden hands. He danced to heavy beats
but in the silence of his closet Mussorgsky bellowed.
He greeted with an hidalgo turn of wrist, and breathed the country,
inhaling its people and brushing the industries off his upper lip
like the foam from stiff beer. The kind of man
Who searched for the foundation stone of mountains.
His soul was made of cambric, but his mind of silk.
Champagne in the evenings and daily food from stalls
With ants crawling over the ice and meat bubbling in the air.
His wife had cheeks like porcelain, that flushed
when filth came near, but he lived with women whose sweat
In the huts he helped build crept rank and sweet through men.
“These are our bodies,” he would say of the musician’s guitars.
“These are our immortal souls,” he cried to the mosquitoes
that drank his blood at every possible turn. He ended his days
shriven and shriveled in a wicker rocker, porched and netted
by his son, watching grands play in white on the shaved-head lawn.
His footprint coated mound grave seemed to shake during storms.
Ah, the passage of years. His children wear gloves. And I
fear to tread by the cemeteries of our mountains, for pagan
hands may catch me, and hold me, and I would not struggle.
I suppose it’s a poem about refinement across successive generations, about crudity giving way to bloodlessness. But mostly it was about my maternal grandfather.
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Speaking of mosquitos, when I was in Idaho, my dad and uncle drove us down to the edge of a lake near Paradise Valley. Atop the sound of the power boats, I heard a high-pitched whine. I thought the sound was emanating from the clifftops.
I asked my uncle, "What’s that sound?"
He replied matter-of-factly, "Power boats."
"No, no. The sound coming from up there."
As I turned upward to point to the cliffs, I saw a swarm of black mosquitoes preparing to attack. The swarm was literally a cloud of mosquitoes only a few feet from me. The scene could have been taken directly from a B-grade horror film. Together, they were producing the high-pitched whine from their wings. I shouted, "Mosquitoes! They’re going to kill us all! Run for your lives!" I removed my hat to wave around, which apparently pissed off the mosquitoes even more, and we bolted for our vehicle. Some of the mosquitoes managed to invade the vehicle, but they were dispatched with ease! Ha. See, I’m not a girly man. I remember squirming around a bit though…
We promptly left that area of the lake to seek shelter at the distant pier where we attempted to catch fish. There were a few mosquitoes flying around, but they seemed more interested in covering our pants than our blood — unlike our recent encounter. After casting a few times with no bites, we packed up and left to return to the hotel some sixty miles away. Finally, I escaped! I escaped with only two mosquito bites on my strumming hand, which somewhat vanished after a good night’s soaking in the jacuzzi.