Gestures

1. When my father started some new task -- stacking hay, lifting sacks of grain -- he hooked his thumbs inside his belt and hitched his pants up, something he learned as a watching boy. Who first showed power this way, I wonder, in front of him some sixty years ago in summer fields -- what muscled giant his thumbs remember? 2. On Rhodes, off Turkey, a stairway climbs from the new town to the old one. Children play on it: running, jumping, skipping like bird shadows on the stone. Half way on the cliff wall is a glistening place where dark-shawled women stop to let their breaths comes slower; and while they wait, one hand goes out to lean against rock and seek renewal. What says to a woman "It is time now to put your hand against this ancient strength while peace stores in the mind from ancient stone?" 3. What unplanned gesture moves from me to you, from you to me in generous sustenance to say we share great certainties, warm as a cliff is warm from daylong sun?