These Hands

These hands

these hands betray my age,
prominent veins course across
tendons toughened over years
of tending children, gardens,
rabbits and other living things.
Now they tend to me more and
more, to the daily chores of a
mostly quiet life, of books, writing,
but also of petting two dogs I never
thought I’d like, and caressing
a love I never thought I’d have.
these hands betray my age, but
do not reveal the emergence
of new possibility, a new
lightness of being.