"The maple's green hands do not cup"
"What empties itself falls into the place that is open."
Relief of an attendant's hand holding a necklace, Middle Kingdom ca. 2051–2030 B.C.
A Hand
by Jane Hirshfield
A hand is not four fingers and a thumb.
Nor is it palm and knuckles,
not ligaments or the fat's yellow pillow,
not tendons, star of the wristbone, meander of veins.
A hand is not the thick thatch of its lines
with their infinite dramas,
nor what it has written,
not on the page,
not on the ecstatic body.
Nor is the hand its meadows of holding, of shaping—
not sponge of rising yeast-bread,
not rotor pin's smoothness,
not ink.
The maple's green hands do not cup
the proliferant rain.
What empties itself falls into the place that is open.
A hand turned upward holds only a single, transparent question.
Unanswerable, humming like bees, it rises, swarms, departs.
From Given Sugar, Given Salt by Jane Hirshfield, HarperCollins, 2001.
Creative Invitation
Imagine you hold one symbolic item in your open palm as an offering to the world or to someone else today. It could be physical or metaphysical. What is it?