A Hand

Henry Moore

A Hand

A hand is not four fingers and a thumb.

Nor is it palm and knuckles,

not ligaments or the fat’s yellow pillow,

not tendons, star of the wristbone, meander of veins.

A hand is not the thick thatch of its lines

with their infinite dramas,

nor what it has written,

not on the page,

not on the ecstatic body.

Nor is the hand its meadows of holding, of shaping—

not sponge of rising yeast-bread,

not rotor pin’s smoothness,

not ink.

The maple’s green hands do not cup

the proliferant rain.

What empties itself falls into the place that is open.

A hand turned upward holds only a single, transparent question.

Unanswerable, humming like bees, it rises, swarms, departs.

 Jane Hirshfield

The thing about poetry that keeps pulling me back in must be that need to look beyond the surface. It isn't just the thing, it's what it signifies, it's the levels of meaning within and around it. This poem is a perfect example of that.