What Goes Round

The clock has lost
its hands, hands that led
us through the day’s maze
one moment at a time.
The world is so fast losing
track of hands that press the earth.
Hands that card, spin, weave, guide
the potter’s wheel, shape form from
primal matter, wool and mud.
We know in our heads
what once flew through
our hands. And what we make
is words, words flung
to far reaches, words
as simulacra. Automation replaces
aeons of hands working their
craft, knowing their trade in kind.
Now we digitally
jerk to each next crisis,
alarmed every morning
into action. Not the way
I learned to tell
time, watching the smoothhands
move round the comfort of circle.

Penn Kemp