Reflections of a Man's Heart

Tonight, as you touched my face,

I thought of Gregory's death:

how knowing perhaps that it would please you,

though he had not shaved for weeks,

he asked you to shave him that day.

It is a thing, I realize now,

that neither his wife nor daughter could do;

and I imagine your fingers suddenly less sure,

moving in ways known until then

only from within.

But in your hands' slow remembering

you shaved him as your father had once shaved you,

with large-knuckled, inexpressible joy.

One man can give another so little:

not courage, not time.

The weight of his head for those moments

held in your hand, and then not.

The melody that carries a children's rhyme

through centuries, though the meaning of the words is lost.

 

- Jane Hirshfield, Of Gravity & Angels