Cracked, callused, and crinkled;
Tiny canyons stretch across thick fingers like monuments,
When my scabs were small islands, his were continents.
When mine skipped stones, those hands moved mountains
And hardened the way things do against time.

Those hands held my mother’s before they ever held mine.
I knew the warm furnaces of love like the roof built over my head.
Mornings always smelled like coffee and scrambled eggs
Prepared with the patience of rocking a baby to sleep.
Fingers folding like a blanket beneath tucked feet
Hugs wrapped around me like band aids.

Splintered, split, stingy and torn,
Knuckles like bark off chopped wood,
Veins like thorny twine stretch across tough tree trunk wrists,
Those hands held the world up like a tree limb holds sacred fruit.
Always scratching the peel rough and raw, opening cuts like orange slices,
Nails like a rake scraping against burnt autumn leaves,
Those hands bled like sacrifice.

Stars glistening like sweat over late night conversations,
Summers spent in the driveway playing catch and taking slap shots,
Those pig skin hands always teaching me to shoot for my goals.
“If you’re not going to do it right, don’t do it at all.”
Things the cracks in the pavement taught me,
Practice and precision seen in life lines.

Dried up rivers stretch across worn desert palms,
Waves of weathered wrinkles rush against sandpaper skin.
Sawdust flesh caked with hurt, if I could take away the pain I would,
But I admire the slits in my own knuckles hoping I too will know
Diligence like the depths of my father’s canyons.