Oyster Boy Review 10  
  January 1999
 
 
 
 
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Poetry


The Shadow of a Thought

Robert J. Podgurski


I am not sure
"How to read the Lines of the Hand"
Tactile dactyls waving mobile
Bands of sinews, roving impulses.
The right just can't seem to agree with the left
On a roll trying to pick up everything
and why "Your fortune's in your" own
who knows.
    Such responsibility should never have been    left
to us, except when we feel    right.

"The Lines of the Hand"
are laid down by law
so no one will mistake them
for what else I don't know,
Maybe our thought's words for actions.
The god's signature on them indelibly etched
display the wrinkles of our brain straightened out
on the wrack.
    So if the best we can hope for is to know
    something like the back our own hand
Then the reason our palms naturally face away
to grasp our fortunes we may not know
hopefully conceals them to make touch our sight.

(excerpts from a card found at
Poplar Tent Books, Charlotte, NC)
11/15/97