Cleaning Your Hands
Taking your hands in mine
I am shocked that they
are covered with grime,
that the aides didn’t notice
how dirty they were.
To love is to go beyond what
one imagined what love was.
The hand sanitizer I had
in my cloth bag couldn’t
dilute the color stuck to
the cuticles of your nails,
the backs of your hands,
your palm lines, your
elegantly tapered fingers.
So, I asked the nurse where
I could find a hand towel,
and should have remembered
the linen closet was just
across the hall from your room,
and I doused the towel with
hot water, and then I began
rubbing the ordure from
your hands to reveal again
their loveliness, with you
exclaiming, “Oh, that feels
so good,” with me continuing
to knead the moist warmth
of the terry cloth, which turned
the fabric brown, until those
hands were returned to their
apparent health, to cleanliness,
which made you beam when
I raised your hands in mine,
and would have told you again,
with firm resolve, how much
you are to me, but I believed
it was obvious that how I
cleaned your hands was in
the way I would have swabbed
those of a child’s, that I learned
love had no conditions, that
I had strode into it mouth-deep,
that it was sustaining, something
always abundantly beautiful.
What Inspires You
It used to be woodswalking, identifying wildflowers, trying to discern the exact day the first leaves unfurled, especially on the leaves of the birch. However, now it is writing my way through my spouse, Tevis, and her struggles with Alzheimer’s, especially with my needing, eventually after being a solo-caregiver for some years at home, to place her in what is now three care homes within two years. Writing my way through it is similar to Frost’s idea of “a momentary stay against confusion,” which is also Rilkean, at least for me, in “Embracing It All,” the title of my newest unpublished collection — embracing, as Rilke see it, the pain in one’s life, which then creates the calculus of that which is embraced leads to one’s transcendence. Although there is nothing transcendent or joyful about experiencing one’s dearest love dying. At the same time, it is the love that is found among the pain that is, indeed, transcendent, which then perpetuates love itself.
Bio
Wally Swist’s new books include Aperture (Kelsay Books), poems regarding caregiving for his spouse through Alzheimer’s, and If You’re the Dreamer, I’m the Dream: Selected Translations from Rilke’s Book of Hours (Finishing Line Press). Huang Po and the Dimensions of Love (Southern Illinois University Press, 2012) was selected by Yuseff Komunyakaa as co-winner of the 2011 Crab Orchard Open Poetry Competition. Wild Rose Bush: The Life of Mary and Other Poems by Rainer Maria Rilke was selected as an honorable mention in the 2025 Stephen Mitchell Prize for Excellence in Translation sponsored by Green Linden Press.
Find the Spring 2026 Issue HERE
Previous NPM 2026 poets
| April 1 | Amy Forstadt |
| April 2 | Annette Sisson |
| April 3 | Beth Kanell |
| April 4 | Bonnie Proudfoot |
| April 5 | Charles Stringer |
| April 6 | D. Dina Friedman |
| April 7 | David Colodney |
| April 8 | Deanna Ludwin |
| April 9 | Eileen Pettycrew |
| April 10 | Felice Alexandra |
| April 11 | Grace Massey |
| April 12 | Hallie Fogarty |
| April 13 | Isabel Cristina Legarda |
| April 14 | Jon Yungkans |
| April 15 | Kim Welliver |
| April 16 | Laura Foley |
| April 17 | Laurie Kuntz |
| April 18 | Marissa Glover |
| April 19 | Michelle McMillan-Holifield |
| April 20 | Miriam Sagan |
| April 21 | Roy Mason |
| April 22 | Sarah Banks |
| April 23 | Sean Whalen |
| April 24 | Shutta Crum |
| April 25 | Simona Carini |
| April 26 | Sunny Hemphill |
| April 27 | Susannah Sheffer |
| April 28 | Tricia Knoll |
| April 29 | Valy Steverlynck |
| April 30 | Wally Swist |