My Mother Meets Ted    by Cornelia Hoogland

He’s not the first I’ve brought home
since the divorce.
My mother doesn't ask a single question.

Late afternoon, we’re walking the spit
through a heads-up valley of fennel
the Chinese who worked the fish plant
seeded here at the turn of the century.
We breathe the yellow burst
of biscotti-butter herb.

My mother grabs a hand-full, rubs
the fragrant plant between her palms,
then drops it. It’s empty hands
she offers Ted.

He bends toward her,
catches her hands in his, inhales.
His body supplicant.

Where Hands Go   by Cornelia Hoogland

His hands
were an old pair, one
over the
knuckled ridge
of the other
(a motion like washing)
I swore he’d stroke
to nothing.

I want to remember
one hand tilling the furred
field of the other
unstintingly as water
tumbles rock.

But this ribbon
of words
cannot stay
his memory –
already it entropies
into the finest
grit that swells
the river of hands
at the end of the world.