My friend Lara Hall is an orthopedic nurse, an exercise instructor and a masseuse. She knows all the muscles and ligaments and tendons and bones and she knows exercise (she teaches a challenging class that just about kills me but makes me feel great when it’s over…which, come to think of it, is sort of how writing feels some days…)…I feel safe in the hands of someone so smart.
It’s more than that, though. I feel loved because she’s also a deeply wonderful human and she’s my friend.
A mask poem is a poem from the point of view of an inanimate object. I thought it would be fun to see what Lara’s hands were thinking.
Sometimes I begin writing a poem, then open my rhyming dictionary and list words that may relate to my topic…sometimes these words help me find my way. Today they did.
This mask poem is in two voices. It’s best read by two people, like a duet: one person takes the lines on the left, the other reads the lines on the right. If you print this in color, one is blue, the other green. Lines in the center are read in unison (black).
LARA’S HANDS
By April Halprin Wayland
I am Left.
I am Right.
Your muscles warm
When we unite
We sometimes pause in our massage to be polite.
We pound.
We press.
Our fingers tuned
To each caress.
They listen for your muscles’ “Yes!”
To give our gift
We work as one
Between us
Your soft skin is spun.
The tightness of the day undone.
And now we pause in our massage to say goodnight.
We hope you liked
This gift massage.
No payment!
(But…perhaps…applause?)
© by April Halprin Wayland 2010 all rights reserved
Please leave a comment on www.TeachingAuthors.com (You can leave your comment after any of our posts…it doesn’t matter if I’m posting or one of the five other authors is. Just scroll down to the first place you can