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.
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I spent the day watching the news from Egypt and finishing a review of Star Trek III: The Search For Spock, which probably sounds a bit distracted since I was. I can't think what to compare to the news-watching besides the fall of the Berlin Wall, which we sat around watching in the kitchen -- I was in tears then, it was a joyous end to the world as I'd always known it -- though the situation in Egypt has been scarier the past couple of weeks and I wasn't sure until today that there wouldn't be a lot of bloodshed before Mubarak agreed to go. Now it's exhilarating to watch.
We had dinner with my parents, then came home for Smallville, which was also a pleasure to watch -- a true return to its roots in which the phrase "coming out" is used at least twice to describe superhero revelation, taking me all the way back to the first season when growing up super was clearly equated with growing up LGBTQ. Spoilers: There is NO better way for an episode to start than with Lionel in Tess's chair, then Martha giving speeches! And the ending is glorious -- it's the Trevor Project for superheroes. Clark needs to stop watching so much Fox News and turn on MSNBC.
Here are some more photos from the stained glass tour at the National Cathedral, including the Space Window, which contains a piece of moon rock:
Fannish5: Five most inspiring fictional revolutions.
1. Deep Space Nine
2. Star Wars
3. Babylon 5
4. Xena
5. Pirates of the Caribbean
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