Veins
I reach to the floor
to pick up something
as trivial as a pin,
focus sharply on my tanned
hand, the highways
of thick blue veins
and hints of metacarpals
like tent poles under
canvas
and see
my dead mother—
her identical hands
that rubbed my back
when I could not sleep,
that held her callused palm to my
forehead for fever,
that held me to her breast
for life,
that reprimanded,
that cooked, that washed,
that pointed to what I
should see,
that did so much,
that I freeze for an instant,
not wanting to scare her off
like the nervous goldfinches
she used to lure
to our backyard crabapple trees
with a thistle seed feeder.