This Hand

This hand
It took me places I had never dreamed
Grasped tightly around my small fingers
The skin felt rough and hard
Skin that had felt so much more than I
Around my dainty fingers it clasped
And brought me through the night
Through the trees where no eyes had laid
For hundreds, perhaps thousands of years
Here I kneel, in this strange new world
To which I had been lead by love
The love this hand had chosen to give to me
For this was its last task upon this Earth
Now here it lay, 
Lifeless as it has never been to me
Unmoving and still
The roughness remains, 
But now cold to the touch
Is this hand that showed me the way.
This hand that is so like mine
Yet so different
My only wish now is that others may feel
As I have felt
That others may see
As I have seen
And that I may have the resolve to lead others
To realize that our similarity is different
And our differences are similar
We are all one

-Prose by Cynthia Smallwood 1/14/08
-Picture of a Silverback Gorilla's Hand taken at Disney's Animal Kingdom