TWO MEASURES OF TENDERNESS
As we gaze around at all the opened presents, cramming the used wrapping paper into the recycling, or folding it carefully for another day, let’s take a moment to think about other memorable gifts, the kind that can’t be bought. Li-Young Lee recalls his father’s hands, “two measures of tenderness” laid against his face. Robert Hass describes the lady and the deer, shaped by the woman from the blue clay of the creek. Is there something you yourself would like to offer, something you could make with your two hands?
“The Gift” by Li-Young Lee (b.1957) To pull the metal splinter from my palm my father recited a story in a low voice. I watched his lovely face and not the blade. Before the story ended, he’d removed the iron sliver I thought I’d die from. I can’t remember the tale, but hear his voice still, a well of dark water, a prayer. And I recall his hands, two measures of tenderness he laid against my face, the flames of discipline he raised above my head. Had you entered that afternoon you would have thought you saw a man planting something in a boy’s palm, a silver tear, a tiny flame. Had you followed that boy you would have arrived here, where I bend over my wife’s right hand. Look how I shave her thumbnail down so carefully she feels no pain. Watch as I lift the splinter out. I was seven when my father took my hand like this, and I did not hold that shard between my fingers and think, Metal that will bury me, christen it Little Assassin, Ore Going Deep for My Heart. And I did not lift up my wound and cry, Death visited here! I did what a child does when he’s given something to keep. I kissed my father.
“The Image” by Robert Hass (b.1941) The child brought blue clay from the creek and the woman made two figures: a lady and a deer. At that season deer came down from the mountain and fed quietly in the redwood canyons. The woman and the child regarded the figure of the lady, the crude roundnesses, the grace, the coloring like shadow. They were not sure where she came from, except the child's fetching and the woman's hands and the lead-blue clay of the creek where the deer sometimes showed themselves at sundown.
Bring to mind some little moment of love or tenderness, ideally something that has to do with childhood—your own, or that of someone else’s, it doesn’t matter. Feel your way back inside those memories, just noticing what comes up. Be patient. Stay with them for a while. Then write a poem or prose piece of your own.
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