A grandfather's hands
Kelsey Bigelow
tell more than he ever will
Don’t look at them too hard or you’ll get lost
on the surface
Instead
see how his scarred and re-scarred thumb tells
of the times he cut himself
hunting
and his calluses talk
of the years spent brushing grass from headstones
which is to say
he put himself through pain
if it meant providing for family
His dirt-covered fingers search arrowheads
for his birth family’s ancestry
aweing over Cherokee paint pots and drill bits
while his soil-covered nails relive the years he tended garden
picking green beans for that night’s dinner
Which is to say
he let his hands find
because dirt has always
been washable
life
in mess
Wrinkles on his wrists still carry his wiggling giggling grandbabies
who rode along as he mowed the lawn
and the wrinkles on his wrists still polka Grandma around the kitchen
as if their teenage care-free never left
Which
is to say
a grandfather’s hands tell of more than a single lifetime
so long
as he lets them speak
for him
Kelsey Bigelow is a professional poet who graduated from UW-Platteville in 2017. She has since self-published her debut chapbook, Sprig of Lilac, in 2018, released a spoken word album, Depression Holders and Secret Keepers, in 2021, and has been published in Backchannels Journal and Z Publishing House. Find Kelsey: kelkaybpoetry.com
Jeff Weiland graduated from UW-Platteville Baraboo Sauk County in the 1980's and has always enjoyed photography.