Five a.m. and again
my left hand dropped the ball;
no pins-and-needles,
no python wrapped
like a living glove
from the elbow down,
no excuse but heredity.
But it wasn’t a bad hand:
good for picking up
ladders and dumbbells
and packed valises.
At first I was going to keep it.

Such a good-for-nothing hand,
so disappointing, displeasing,
disaffecting—good for fumbling
with a cigarette, for offering
an empty glass.

There was a fire in my dome
when I was young and
everything—the smoke, the burn—
smelled like home and a pound
of tolling bells rolled through my mind.