SECOND PLACE WINNER : Origami Poems Kindness Contest 2017

Hands

Ibn Battua Mall, 2015

    by Frank Dullaghan

My hand is taken
by a small warm hand –
a girl, maybe four years old, gold skin,
hair a scatter of black. She tugs
or maybe it’s that I hold back enough
for her to know her mistake.

She takes her hand away,
regards me like a question –
her brown eyes serious.
She scans the crowd, runs to a man
some steps away, his mind gone
ahead of his body.

She takes his hanging hand
and anchors him. He looks at her
then lets his mind go free again.
She glances back, solemn,
centered, minding him.
And now she smiles: brightness.

I hold the moment close,
a state of grace.

*
Frank Dullaghan © 2017
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Frank Dullaghan is an Irish poet living in Dubai and has 3 collections published in the UK by Cinnamon Press.  His most recent collection is 'The Same Roads Back,’ 2014. In 2016, he had a pamphlet, 'Secrets of the Body', published by Eyewear Publishing.*

- Read this and the other 60+ poems in 'The Best of Kindness 2017' available on Amazon or from the CreateSpace e-store: https://www.createspace.com/7018282

   Cover art by Lauri Burke