25 years this blog has weathered space and time and it was offline for a couple years with no backup. Thanks to an older backup XML file and the Wayback Machine, I’ve been able to restore the original journal that spans a quarter century of my life. This poem is a time warp from the poem I wrote, which is in the archives, titled: My 22 Year Old Hands…
My 44 Year Old Hands
These are my 44-year-old hands.
Desert hands.
Sun-cured. Split. Salted with years.
They don’t move fast anymore,
but they move like water in a dry wash —
only when it matters.
There are canyons in the knuckles now,
thin arroyo lines where old grief carved through
and never quite washed smooth.
The bones creak like truck springs on a washboard road.
Weather talks through them.
These hands have gripped a steering wheel at 2 a.m.,
held a camera like a compass,
picked through rusted towns and shuttered doors,
lifted stones just to see what lives beneath.
They’ve bled on sandstone.
They’ve shaken with anger and mercy.
They’ve held people like fragile relics
and buried things that never came back.
I don’t use them to reach for everything anymore.
The desert taught them restraint —
you carry only what you need
or the road strips you clean.
Now they know the feel of wind,
of heat that hums in metal,
of prayers sent up with dust devils
instead of pews.
My 44-year-old hands aren’t pretty.
They’re honest.
They tremble less from wanting
and more from remembering.
And when I finally lay them down —
sand-cold, still,
done —
I hope the earth knows them,
like a long-lost stone
rolled back into its riverbed,
and trusts
that they tried to hold this world
without breaking it.
by Nathan Arizona
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