Lively Hands (A Poem)

My post on Nobody's Rambler tonight was about handwriting vs. typing, so here I decided to post a poem I wrote recently that's about the hands that make art.  Unfortunately I've been feeling a little out of sorts all night, so I couldn't really give this the look-over it deserves.  The format needs some serious thought, as does the ending.  But all in all I like the idea of the poem, so I'll keep working with it.  Actually, this is really similar to my poem from last night, with its insistence on reality as something to be treasured.  It's probably pretty obvious by now that I've written quite a few poems with this theme at their heart, along with poems that involve manipulating the physical form of art - painting, writing, etc. - into the scenes they would describe.  I seem to have an obsession with hands in that way.  Maybe sometime I'll try to write something that deals with hands in a completely different way, if only for the challenge.

So anyways, I hope you at least enjoy reading it.  I just realized I didn't make my usual plea last time for comments and criticisms - please let me know if you don't like anything about this poem!  Comments really are appreciated, more so than you know, and criticisms even more so.  If something doesn't sound right to you, or an image just sounds plain dumb, like me know!  Otherwise it'll just keep being dumb, and then I'll keep being dumb, and that just doesn't seem right.  Either way, I hope reading it wasn't a waste of time!
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Lively Hands
by Matthew Stalbaum

Ink can only move from a hand that moves
from a hand that's moved limbs & time
moved across sea-breezes & over sweaty brows
over a chest to feel a reassuring pounding
a troublesome, wearisome pounding;
Hands that have moved precisely
recklessly randomly joyously
that have regretted where they've gone
& found secrets still in shadowy pockets;
Hands that moved quickly conscious
of time too conscious perhaps--
Hands that have lingered over a page
a flower a shoulder that got lost
in the silence of touch in the thoughts that follow
an absense of thought - hands that have
fallen to feel weightless, rise to feel gravity.

From these hands ink dances, music leaps,
paintings breath lustily (smelling the beach,
hearing the seagulls soar by, feeling the sand
slowly pull at sinking feet),
these hands stretch a note, a bridge,
the crossing of a T
until it curls at the ends, bounces
at the ends, waiting to be sprung
or unwound--

Hands don't decide these things,
they set motion, & worlds spin from them.