My hands writing,

are hairy, battered, scraped, dirty, and blistered. 

The left hand holds down the paper. 

Skin spackled with a light spray of paint -

two coats of brown primer and three coats gloss black. 

I have been repainting an old bicycle for my father. 

Tin parts hang on the tree in the back yard.

Dangling in the wind,

like wild ripe fruit.

 

Dirty fingernails adorn the left hand

and there is a place where

part of the skin covering a knuckle is missing,

scraped away in a punching bag. 

The pads of two fingers on that hand are blistered from a burn,

fried on a Honda brake disk. 

 

The right hand is not nearly as colorful as the left. 

It is truly dirty. 

Yet it has been washed many times. 

The back shows a number of fresh scrapes and abrasions. 

There is the "7"-shaped scar on the pointer finger,

the swollen, broken ring finger knuckle,

and the dark spot where something seems buried beneath the skin on yet another knuckle. 

Buried like a dark spot on some Schwinn leaf,

or a dent in the dark freshly painted fender