the hand

 *****

eye, the wandering artist, felt a hand from the sky, a giant hand on his back, it was awesome, unnameable.  eye couldn't see the hand, only in his minds eye. he heard the hand and the hand said, "everything will be okay".  later,  trying to describe what the hand felt like, eye wrote, "the hand was backward support, forward strength, warmth, love, even playfulness like a swinging, bouncing hammock".  eye didn't know what the hand was but he had seen a hand like it in a rembrandt painting in the hyde collection, a small museum in upstate new york. the hand that rembrandt painted was the left hand of jesus,  gently resting on jesus' chest, full of luminosity.  in the moment that eye saw the hand in the rembrandt painting eye thought to himself, "is this the hand of jesus or the hand of rembrandt"?

                                                        *****