Prism's New Issue Gail Peck's Poetry

What a beautiful poem Gail Peck writes about the simplest of human attributes; a poem about a hand. Writing is usually something I declare as beautiful because of its image-inspiring language; a poet must create three- dimensional images for readers from two dimensional words. Black and white words from a page must leap across the vision of the reader and inspire colorful thought. This is usually a principle which takes a great amount of words to complete; stories are, after all, words trying to inspire imagery in their length.
But "Sketch of a Child's Hand" is beautiful in so few words. Peck conveys the entire life and temperament of a person through the marks and shape of their hands.
The poem is about the hands of a child; innocent hands. Hands which
"Rubbed the fur of the dog’s back
velvet ears snout to tail."
These hands are seen by the reader as tiny, harmless. But how does the reader feel when they are told that these hands have been inspired after artwork by Frantisek Brozan, a child at Terezin Concentration Camp? Amazing how the blood of the Concentration Camp never made it onto the hands of this child. The hands of this child show his innocence; hurt coming only from
"Palm scraped on wire
Aching finger where the bee stung."
These hands, these hands. They tell so much about this child who is brought to vivid, three-dimensional color by Peck's words. The words dance across the page in front of the reader and take us for a journey, for a surprise, a marvel in the innocence of childhood.
At the end of the poem, we as readers have seen this child. And we feel for him. We want to hold his hand.