Thumb

behind faneuil hall
boston

Thumb

Even love must pass through loneliness,

the husbandman become again

the Long Hunter…

                                He can no longer be at home

he cannot return, unless he begin

the circle that first will carry him away.

                                                                                Wendell Berry

                                                                                “Setting Out”

Truth is, it’s small enough a start to not have to let it

bother me at all and it’s in a spot so

unnoticeable when I wince against the pressure

I thnk it should not be allowed, should not be such a great pain

at all, look, it’s just the corner and the tip

of my thumb and what is it required

to do really but grip and balance and listen I can adjust

my life enough to not require it—hold

my button on the other side of my thumb, roll

it through the eyehole the way I used to

when I was still learning buttons—and while it might

fumble through, soon enough it’s settled

and the scab is still set and bent on its own

healing almost ready to be ignored completely

the way it is all through the dark slowly slowly

closing and needing only time, a few more hours really

before the soft skin closes over and won’t give

way again.  I’m thinking like it’s two

people constantly together and something, a stiff

wind maybe and a little friction

without the grease makes the heat and the miniature

pain and going out briefly

to start the car in the cold and we think

nothing of it and the day is a ride in a warm

enough place and our hands are busy on the wheel

and our lips are busy in our thinking to settle them

on all those places they haven’t settled in

for a long long time and we think I’ll touch him

this way I’ll touch him this way, a whole list of this

ways and we’ll draw our course with one thumb

first over the charts and maps of our day and calculate

the miles and the windspeed and span our pinky and thumb

like a compass and see, then, the thin rise of blood

and almost almost almost (listen, it’s nothing we can still

make love, and he’ll touch his tongue to it) and the start

of it is a blot on the spot in the sea I’d hoped to meet

him in and it’s enough of the truth of it right now,

even though it’s a small such, a small enough, pain,

its distracting as a lit matchhead enough just blown on

to pull me off course and take a different wind, waiting

for it to rise up, waiting for its hot companion tongue

and cheek to die down to closure.