Do you remember Richard’s hands, Lisa?
Michelangelo caught and stilled hands like Richard’s,
his Adam’s frescoed reach bound by two dimensions
that on Richard were four—height depth breadth time
lives before us lives yet to come
assailed existence onerous survival
not regarded as art or beauty, although
it is a beauty rougher than fresco
and warm as wood, if wood were flesh
elegantly crafted walnut with oil finish
delicately poised for work or rest, unaware
that surgeons, musicians, artists
would weep in envy at the sight
but there was more to this.
Richard’s demeanor bespoke his hands
tentative, unobstrusive, and with a tremor so slight
that gave Richard’s hands an animation, life
that joined and sang with the spirits who dwell
in pencils, spoons, split wood, rawhide.
Lisa, let us remember
the late summer afternoon
he sat on the back stairs, making a drum.
We watched his hands hollow a stump
and stretch, coaxingly, wet rawhide
while my little girls and Richard’s nieces
played on the swing set in the yard.
“Uncle Richard washed our hair last night,”
said Peaches. “For bugs; they’re all gone now,”
said Kitty. Richard looked up and smiled as
those hands that had gently washed and combed
lice from little girls’ hair shaped and smoothed
wet rawhide to a ragged circle then laced
top and bottom back and forth, back and forth.
Do you see this photograph? Do you remember
I walked among the children with a roasting pan
of watermelon wedges that late summer day?
Out of the frame you stood by in a yellow apron,
holding a glass of wine and looking upward.
Was it cloud pictures you saw forming and re-forming
of the last season’s rice harvest,
Richard newly sober and newly strong;
were you listening for the sky song of jigging day?
Braced against the open car door
he sang with the sky, dancing on dried hulls.
We sat on the back stairs watching the children play
while Richard carved the drumstick, the air cool
in the afternoon shade; I recall damp wood
and peeling paint soft and curving under our backsides,
the piece of sheepskin the color of the clouds
that his beautiful hands wrapped onto the drumstick.
The dog, smitten by the smell of Richard and rawhide,
nosed and kissed his hands, and slept at his feet.
Lisa, let us remember winter,
that afternoon we had a flat.
As Richard changed the tire under a sun the color of clouds
we stood behind him to cut off the icy wet wind.
“Makes me wish I had some gloves;
it’s hard on the hands,” he half-laughed in his quiet voice
as his fingers stiffened to hardwood
from the touch of that cold cold iron jack.
Later on we walked along the tracks checking snares
and I remember it like a photograph
Richard in his red plaid lumberjacket
arms crossed, hands in his armpits
you in your long dressy coat
me in my mother’s quilted jacket
and found a rabbit caught but still alive
struggling it paused then kicked, paused then kicked
“I hate when this happens,” Richard said
in his quiet voice; bending and turning away
to spare the sight of what was necessary,
mercifully and quickly tightening the wire
with his kind and sorrowing hands.
At Richard’s place, Donna made the soup
and frybread so light it danced on the plate
(we didn’t know a white girl could do that).
“What do you use, baking powder or soda?”
we aspiring Frybread Queens asked.
“I use both,” said rosy Donna,
all bashful as an Indian.
“I taught her how,” said Richard
as Donna charmed golden puffs from the stove.
Then with warmed hands the color of the frybread
and rough and graceful as the old wood table we sat at
he served us all, his elderly father first.
Feasting, we listened to Richard’s dad, veteran and elder
with Richard’s distant, husky voice
tell us about when he was in the army,
stationed in the South years ago, after the war,
and all the mixed-blood people down there.
“Good to us, the Makadewisug; always
nice to Indians, and fed us, too.
A lot of them part-Indian, themselves, you know;
treated us nice and shared their food with us.”
In the spring Richard showed us how to cut porcupine quills
under a plastic bread wrapper, with toenail clippers
so the little points wouldn’t fly up
and put out our eyes.
He made us quill necklaces light as air
that rested on our collarbones, singing his songs.
He wrote me once after I moved away
on a card he’d bought especially,
with a sketch of an Indian woman on it.
He hoped all was good and that I liked the picture
and then he moved, too,
to Minneapolis, near the Ave,
and was lost
I ran into his sister after that
and she said I wouldn’t know if I saw him
that he was killing himself drinking
Lisi-ens, sometimes I do it, too,
step out of the frame and look skyward
where for all we know it is possible
that we might see Richard
in the clouds.