Charlee's Hand
- write4hire
- Dec 14, 2022
- 1 min read
Charlee’s Hand
A Double Sonnet
The photograph alone is enough to make me smile, even crow, Connor beaming as he cradles his baby cousin
on Thanksgiving day. Yet that sweet
as sweet image would not call me
from my warm bed the next morning,
no different than any morning over more
than a half century of babies and more
babies, every morning in search of words
to say what is always unsayable beyond
the breathless wonder of watching my kids,
then my kids cradling their kids,
a satisfaction so satisfying it makes the word
satisfaction dull and unsatisfying.
*
A day later, or maybe it’s a lifetime later,
I notice Charlee’s hand in that sweet
still life, her arm reaching into the frame,
fingers slipped under the baby’s bottom
making sure her big brother won’t let
the tiny bundle slip out of his grasp,
that unseen gesture captured forever mid-
leap across the voiceless chasm of devotion
saying everything I’d ever hoped to say
on all my solitary mornings, day after day
seeking rapture in a word, the heavenly
body of a poem cradled in a beautiful girl’s
soft palm, my unwriteable epitaph
landing without a sound on the other side.
—SL, December 2022, New Paltz, NY
"A picture is worth a thousand words" was never more apt.