Handprints

I remember tracing photos in picturebooks
With pens as a young boy
Straining to capture the beauty in images
That had brought me so much joy
And destroying them in the process
Obscuring them with scribbled ink lines
I’d then run and complain to my mother
Who’d patiently listen to my whines
“If you mark something up, you have to live with it,”
She’d gently and calmly say
“Take care of the things you love
The marks won’t go away.”
I had to relearn this lesson with other things
Model planes and favorite magazines
I’d hold on to these things too tightly
And leave handprints on them
                                             It seems
To love is to hold on lightly
Grabbing tightly comes from fear
That your happiness comes from that thing alone
You’ll destroy what you hold dear
Though also these things can leave marks on you
Like newsprint or PB&J fingers
Or patches of white plastic airplane glue
These soft reminders linger
So, too, do the scars left behind
By sharp things you didn’t want lost
Those marks don’t leave your body
The small but permanent cost
Of grabbing on far too tightly
And wrapping your hands around
Things that you don’t need that badly
These lessons are hard, I’ve found
I’ve spent much of my time re-learning them
With the trappings of an adult’s life
Like booze, and fair-weather friends
And a one-time future wife
I left handprints on her once
I’ll admit, though I’m not proud to say
Take care of the things you love
The marks won’t go away

It seems like this poem should end now
But handprints aren’t all of the story
In dreams and forgetting God heals
The Master creates all things, His glory
Is in the wholeness and fullness of life
We grab on to parts and forget
That they alone can’t satisfy
We moan their loss, and yet
We also grasp lightly, it’s true
With pictures and photographs, all art
Is an attempt to capture in a bottle
Images that have stirred our heart
Sun slanting across rusted rivets
Or shimmering through water on lake sand
Are we not children tracing images
That were made by the Master’s hand?