Poems about hands capture the profound significance and symbolic power embodied by these remarkable parts of our bodies. They delve into the complex emotions, actions, and connections that hands convey, touching upon various themes and aspects of human experience.
These poems often celebrate the tenderness and intimacy of touch, portraying hands as vehicles of love, compassion, and empathy. They explore the warmth of a supportive hand, the gentle caress of a loved one, or the comforting grip of reassurance.
Poems about hands evoke a sense of connection and convey the power of touch in forging deep emotional bonds.
‘A Woman’s Hands’ talks on a wife/mother is proclaiming her distress in the number of tasks she must tend to regarding her family.
A woman’s hands always hold something:
A handbag, a vase, a child, a ring, an idea.
My hands are tired of holding
They simply want to fold themselves.
‘Amaze’ by Adelaide Crapsey explores the poet’s hands and the emotions she experiences when she looks at them she sees her mother’s.
A woman like me once had hands
Like these.
Robinson Jeffers’s poem ‘Hands’ is about the distance between modern civilization and past civilizations. It voices Jeffers’s philosophy of “inhumanism.”
Inside a cave in a narrow canyon near Tassajara
The vault of rock is painted with hands,
‘Genetics’ speaks on the composition of one’s body and how one is made of their mother, father, and their combined history.
My father’s in my fingers, but my mother’s in my palms.
I lift them up and look at them with pleasure –
I know my parents made me by my hands.
‘The Hands that Signed the Paper’ is a war protest poem that derides the appalling apathy and ruthlessness of the rulers toward ordinary citizens.
The hand that signed the paper felled a city;
Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath,
Doubled the globe of dead and halved a country;
These five kings did a king to death.
‘Song Of The Worker’s Wife’ portrays mother’s full nest empties, leaving her hands idle and heart yearning for past days of bustling care.
"My hands are none too white,
Nor lovely nor tender either,
They're rough and ugly to your sight,
Because of the constant labour,
‘Holding Hands’ by Lenore M. Link is a light-hearted children’s poem that describes the way elephants “hold hands.” They link tails and spend their days in one another’s company.
Elephants walking
Along the trails
Are holding hands
By holding tails.
‘The Little Girl Waved Her Hand’ by Riyas Quarana describes a surrealist world in which the speaker reflects on the pond, clouds, and general evening.
Eyeing the sky
the entire place had assembled there
sorrow-stricken.
‘Taking Off My Clothes’ by Carolyn Forché is a short, effective poem about a relationship. The speaker spends the lines uses imagery to define the various aspects of her partner and herself.
I take off my shirt, I show you.
I shaved the hair out under my arms.
I roll up my pants, I scraped off the hair
on my legs with a knife, getting white.
Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral invites the listener to give the poet their hand and dance: “Give me your hand and you will love me…”
Give me your hand and give me your love,
give me your hand and dance with me.
A single flower, and nothing more,
a single flower is all we'll be.
support@poemanalysis.com
Poem Solutions Limited
Company no: 10883994
United Kingdom
Access Poetry PDF Guides
for this Poem
Complete Poetry PDF Guide
Perfect Offline Resource
Covers Everything You Need to Know
One-pager 'snapshot' PDF
Great Offline Resource
Gateway to deeper understanding
870+ Reviews
