Hands and Feet

by Mike Pacey

Dec. 16, 1850: My feet are much nearer to foreign or inanimate matter or nature than my hands; they are more brute, they are more like the earth they tread on, they are more clod–like and lumpish, and I scarcely animate them.

Sept. 2, 1851: Not till after several months does an infant find its hands, and it may be seen looking at them in astonishment, holding them up to the light; and so also it finds its toes.  How many faculties there are which we have never found!  Some men, methinks, have found only their hands and feet.

Our hands are to our feet
as strong hand is to weak.

My left hand’s me, bears the meaning
of all I do: picking up a glass of water,
buttoning my shirt, tying
a knot in my tie — each daily task
requiring a little English —
my left’s the one that speaks.
My right hand’s dumb —
never knows what my left’s doing.
When I write, try to explain myself,
who I am; my left forms every letter.

It’s the other way round for most —
your right’s good, dexterous —
your left but a mitt, meat; handcuffs you.
There’s more you in the right;
left means sinister in Latin,
denotes feeble, worthless in Anglo -Saxon.
Makes left-handed compliments.
All thumbs.  We touch the dead with our left,
In Islam, it’s the hand that wipes your butt.
People masturbate with their “other” hand,
because it feels like someone else
performs the chore.
But compared to either hand,
our feet, our other extremities,
are just blocks of wood.
Think of the fingers, the names
we’ve bestowed on each.
Forefinger, aka index, pointer, or toucher;
long finger, or middle;
then goldfinger, ring -finger.  And pinky,
“little man.”  But toes lie in a row,
like root -vegetables, anonymous
blunt stubs;
mud’s pals, go wee wee wee
all the way home, namelessly.

Ashamed of our feet, we conceal them
in socks and shoes.  Everyone feels
their feet have some freakish, ugly attribute:
a vestige of web, bunions, fallen arches
(my second toe’s longer than my big).
Only in the bath do we deign
to look at them — hands’ rude country cousins.
Our brains map our hands as great nations,
our feet, tiny principalities.

Long fingers: sign of genius;
long toes: “monkey-feet.”
Footnotes.  Peons, pedestrian.
But they know the Earth, its surface,
so perfectly.
This question Thoreau asks himself
repeatedly:
Why do we shun our home so?