Don Hogle is a poet, blogger (dhogle.wordpress.com) and brand and communications strategist living in Manhattan. Mud Season Review, Minetta Review, Blast Furnace, Shooter, Clapboard House and DoveTales from Writing for Peace are among the journals that have published his poetry recently.
Don Hogle
Mr. Clean wipes away the children’s
handprints with a swipe of his Magic
Eraser, then winks at us, as if to say,
They’re just kids. And we forgive
their painted palms and the wormy dirt
of their play, because their laughter,
rippling through the labyrinth
of laundry on the lines, reminds us that
life not only continues, but persists.
In the cave at Font-de-Gaume,
where bison, mastodons, deer and
woolly mammoths were painted,
you see the outline of a hand held
up to stone, black pigment blown
through a bone to surround it
fourteen thousand years ago.
It’s as if Cro-Magnon man
knew you would arrive one day:
he hails, waves at you, asks for your
attention, motions you to approach,
invites you with this shape-of-a-hand
to place your hand within his.
He waits for you on the other side
of time, anxious for a touch of what
he imagined, crouched near dying
coals, unknowable lights throbbing
above him in the black maw of night.
His other hand holds the end of a thread,
the long line you grip tightly now,
as you cast it with so little certainty
into the rising seas, your footprints
washed out with the tide.