Stains

Stains

The doctors gave it their best guess

They created a time frame for life remaining

Life, however, chooses its own timing

At some point, we all gathered for final goodbyes

It would be so easy to focus on the span

But life isn’t all about its beginning 

And it’s certainly not all about its ending

Life is about the things we stuff in between 

I held your hands several times for a bit

In what we knew were the final days and hours 

The conversation was decidedly one sided

And in the gaps, I studied your hands

There were the expected wrinkles

There were scars accrued in a lifetime

Most of them remnants of forgotten injuries 

And perhaps some even well remembered 

What caught my writer's imagination 

More so than the wrinkles and scars

Were subtle, nearly unnoticeable stains

Stains from a lifetime of labor and living

As I contemplated the discoloration 

It came to me quite abruptly

In those stains was my living as well

I was part of the stains on these loving hands

These hands provided my childhood 

They paid the way for my adolescents

They made my secondary education possible

So many things in my life came with these stains

I looked at my own hands

There were wrinkles and scars 

There may have even been the hint

Just the beginning of a stain 

In all I love about my chosen profession 

The challenges and accomplishments 

I love that it provides a living

For me and those I love dearly

It gives me wrinkles

It gives me occasional scars

It gives me daily and lifetime stains

Hands to be considered during word gaps

Wrinkles

Scars

Stains

© Ron Simpson Jr. 

March 15, 2020