Daddy Hand
After Lucien Freud’s “Man With a Feather (Self Portrait)”

What of my hands these rough slatterns?
Lingering vowels strung nightly
from dance floors and copper-topped bars, wherever
we elide defenses in tatters and drink. Sullen boredom
emitting world or slurring word, every subject abject, gaudy bleat.
Left is the heavy, the shepherd, opener of doors, books, asks and bye-
byes. It replaces the ledger
on the shelf. It doesn’t wear the watch –
no temporal hampering for the left hand.
Time pulses, testing rightness.
It doesn’t lift fork to mouth or stir the boiling meal.
It will not sign its name.
It does not need a name.
On the desk, it lies flat, anchoring the rest, sprung
thumb flexed and definite.
It can wait.
This hand was once the go-to; it will be again.
No more stammering, no more
lost, no more thanking.
Pray.

—Celia Bland

Celia Bland is the author of three collections of poetry and the co-editor of a collection of essays on the work of Jane Cooper. She works at Bard College.