My Thumb

thick, but not so thick as my father’s or as an old man’s whose hands have hung mute fifty years from the shoulders, a leverage for swinging hammers, or gripping steady to lift the splintered handles of the wheel barrow, my thumb, bending around the neck of the guitar, steadying the pen against my fingers, knowing always when to strike the space-bar, its inch-long scar a quiet mouth, quiet, quiet, is not as thick as appearance might dictate, only, he lets me speak what he would say, words for all my fingers my toes and every organ, every cell and atom, all of us together