They resemble rumpled leaves
gone brown and brittle
under a tired maple
I have not been a dishwasher
in a restaurant kitchen,
a picker of fruit, a logger,
a sun baked reader of suspense novels
A finger on one hand,
bent by arthritis,
now turns sideways;
the other hand darkened
by a kitchen fire
I don’t know what a charlatan
might divine about where the maps
of my palms will lead
Only that the sticks of my hands,
like the barren trees of autumn,
show me winter is near
I can almost touch it