Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options
Kathy CoffeyJanuary 29, 2007
If healing has hands
they are hers. Rivers of mercy
flow down the tense neck,
the knotted muscles,
the contorted spine.

Weeks of mind over matter
soothed by hands that pull
like artist’s brush through
rich ochre. She banishes the
demons drumming the shoulders.

Grace must be like this:
touch melting stiffness.
Miraculous, the gifts
we give each other. Don’t
stop. Don’t ever stop.


Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.

The latest from america

The day before he died, Pope Francis made one final circuit through St. Peter’s Square in his popemobile. “That’s my last image of him alive,” Gerry O’Connell remembered. “He drove among the people.”
Universities need to change. But Trump is attacking the wrong problems.
Nathan SchneiderApril 25, 2025
Editor in chief Sam Sawyer, S.J., reflects on praying with Pope Francis’ body in St. Peter’s Basilica.
Sam Sawyer, S.J.April 25, 2025
Just about two weeks before he died, Francis announced that Archbishop-elect McKnight will be the next archbishop of Kansas City, Mo., and that Bishop Lewandowski will become the next bishop of Providence, R.I.