The Thumbprint

The thumbprint stays behind
Wrapped in crinkly paper
Four fingers beside it
Filing cabinet cold, the thumbprint's gold
If you know the story
Black if it's all a myth

The thumbprint's in your mind
Cold in the corner, cringing
Cement underfoot
They hooked the boy to sensors, damn torpedoes
Flying in the sun
Soaring from the magic hills

I wrote a riddle
I read someone else's
The rough knight cradled
His dancing girl
Her hair on fire
Gelatin and cellular
Scarred and cultured
She claimed the hills as hers

Demolition, marriage ended
Streets on fire, merry widow waltz
A parade of little cars
Down the hill, to the canyon
He grips the wheel
She's got a feather touch

And in the plastic pitch of all that's lost
He screamed the names of silent underdogs
Who won the waltz but lost the dancing queen
His fingers touch the gypsy skin of a raging libertine

Her arms with tracing tracks of old regrets
Her balance off, her hair an impish mess
She shakes her hips and hangs her head
Down so we see the back of her white neck

In the little village beneath her hair line
Is a circle, all traversed, a dropping hint
He put it there one night, wearing shoes without laces
His final remnant, his random right thumbprint

December 18, 2007