Chalk-Stained Hands

Your hands were always chalk-stained at the fingertips—
the occupational mark of the opened world,
of the knowledge given without measure or accounting,
of the word written on the board and unfurled.

Those chalk-stained hands opened more doors
than a locksmith opens in a lifetime of opening—
they held the chalk and the child and the possibility
and they did not stop for the wondering.

I think of those hands when I face a difficulty—
the way they wrote the problem on the board,
then stepped back and said: now—who can solve it?
And meant: you can. And gave us back the word.
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