as if I hid my hands
with gnarled fingers
under my grandma’s mohair shawl
the same winter after winter on her shoulders

and my finger bones don’t stay wise
like cuckoo offspring in a deserted nest
they tremble starving
to pick again that rose so perfidiously red
climbing the house pillar

I order them to stay straight
as far as for me there is a cross
or a point
and then another line