My hands have had their fun, and now must suffer.

A wealth of sun, especially on the right,

ungolf-gloved hand, pays dividends of damage:

white horny spots, pre-cancerous, that grow

until the squinting dermatologist

hits back by spraying liquid nitrogen,

which stings like a persistent, icy bee.

One spot especially fascinated me—

a trapezoidal chip of cells gone wrong

between my wrist and thumb, in vexing view

whenever I wrote or gestured. Blasted, it

sat up on a red blister, then a scab.

How hideous! Obsessing helplessly,

I couldn’t stop my wishing it away,

and yet it clung, a staring strange bull’s-eye

both part of me and not, like consciousness

or an immortal, ugly soul. I touched

it morning, noon, and night, a talisman

of human imperfection and self-hate.

The dermatologist had botched his job,

I feared. Only death would unmar me. Then

it fell off in a New York taxicab.

I brushed it lightly, settling back, and felt

a kind of tiny birth-pang near my thumb.

Release! Pinched fingers held a piece of flesh

no longer me—so small and dry and meek

I wondered how the thing had held, so long

and fiercely, my attention. Fighting down

an urge to slip it in my jacket pocket

to save among my other souvenirs,

or else to pop it in my mouth, to give

those cells another chance, I dropped it to

the dirty taxi floor, to join Manhattan’s

unfathomable trafficking of dust.

A tidy rosy trace has still to heal.