The Hands of Others by James Stockinger

It is in the hands of other people

that supply the needs of our bodies,

both in our infancy and beyond.

For each of us lives in and through

an immense movement

of the hands of other people.

The hands of other people lift us from the womb.

The hands of other people grow the food we eat,

weave the clothes we wear and

build the shelters we inhabit.

the hands of other people give pleasure to our bodies

in moments of passion

and aid and comfort in times of affliction and distress.

It is in and through the hands of other people

that the commonwealth of nature is appropriated

and accommodated to the needs of pleasures

of our seperate, individual lives, and,

at the end,

it is the hands of other people that lower us into the earth.

 

by James Stockinger

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