Handprints

After half-an-hour's dusty drive from Los Alamos,
and another half-hour climb up a hot cliff
I found myself scrunched inside
a cave the size of a child's playhouse,
surprisingly warm and damp
as if corpses had started to break again.
Paintings on the slippery walls -
square horses, empty circles,
men made of burnt sticks.
And there beside me
a crinkled handprint, fingers spread.

Touch me, I said out loud
starting the miniature echoes
from their long stupors.
My palm and the rock both sweating,
I leaned forward, my flesh
doubling its hardness, smacking
against the wall, shattering
each small grain of loneliness.
Someone long ago touched me back.

Here and now, huddled
in what little is left of Ontario's fall
I stand by the living room window
palm prints smearing cool grey glass,
a kind of braille. Touch me:
as if someone might actually
drive down this street, make the long
climb out of their warm car
to reach me, lifelines mingling.

Is that a human being
at the window across the street
or just a stick of furniture
pressed too close to an empty curtain?
Over here, I wave, all those years of me
gathering into one small act.
After a lonely day, I lay a hard hand
on the place where my heart
chisels away at rock.
This fumbled stroke, another
smudge lost in the blur.

Barry Dempster,
The burning alphabet, Brick Books, 2005, with permission of the author