Hand Prints

On the cave’s envelope

your hand is pressed;

sent on its mission into mine

Your shy woad star

a perennial gentian with

fingertips of red ochre.

A joke that no-one laughs at

blown through hollow bone,

a shape that only I can see.

Side by side, apart they lie;

to be covered, lost,

brushed and excavated

Some day a soul may see

two hand prints almost touching,

tell a story that we

never dared to live.