By Hand

Gazing out the kitchen window, my most strenuous
physical exertion these days is plunging my hands
into hot, soapy water, carefully washing each dish,
pan, and piece of silverware, no machine allowed here.

As my hands perform their practiced routine
I drift along the currents and eddies
of past, present, and future, timelessly suspended
and sampling like a banquet, spread for my mind to taste.

Memories of my children as babies, my husband and I
as high school teens, myself as a child of the 1970’s, scroll through
in technicolor, longing tingeing the corners of each memory,
to return and hug a lost loved one, see a favorite vanished place.

Present worries push through every now and then, plans, lists,
and needs demanding head space and time, but are soon
submerged beneath the warm water and waves of music,
my laptop softly playing as my hands do as they have done for forty years,
and I am at peace with the world once again.

Tracy Plath