Hands

There are hands around me.
They keep watch and wave when there is danger.

They gesture with broken metal wristbands
and ringed fingers,

hands whose fingernails are edged
with night and creased with years,

who have shaped dreams
when dreams had ruptured wings.

These are hands who have been teachers.
So when I speak, when I ask

why G-d has sent the Jews to wander
once again in the desert,

as bombs blow up restaurants in Tel Aviv
as bombs destroy mosques on the West Bank

without a bird to nest
in the cracks of the Wailing Wall,

a pale beak tangled in barbed wire
still estranged from its own song,

as I stretch out my hand to an invisible hand
and squeeze hard.