Sensitive hands

He has the most beautiful hands. Long fingers, arced tips, black hair shiny as crow's feathers on his knuckles, palms webbed with fine lines. Grinning, he says the tangle of lines means he's ultra-sensitive. He's sensitive, but not the way you'd expect. I say "You're shallow." He shrugs. I tease him until he's turned on, then make a married woman's excuse and split. He smiles. Always eager to see me, never mentions I'm married. Sensitive like the fox. Hangs around after dark, knows when he's getting too close and when it's time to leave. I leave. I keep coming back.

Thomas Timmins was born in rural Iowa where he grew up among He somehow won the genes-and-family lottery when he inherited natural happiness coupled with a skeptical eye. Despite the gifts of love and empathic values he received, he's had his magic carpet pulled out from under him many times. He stays aloft because of his four magnificent children and their miraculous lives and children. Thomas has published and performed his poetry and short fiction in person and in print across the U.S. and on the internet. With poet friends, he founded Fractals, a literary tabloid and ran Poets and Players, a community performance series. Having had more jobs than most itinerant workers, he turned the experiences into fodder for his literary work and confidence to found create and manage his own projects, for a living and for community service. Thomas developed and taught writing and coaching programs for inmates, published commercial writing, founded, managed, and advised several small businesses ranging from soyfoods to ice cream to telephone fundraising to biological pest control to a video game start-up to energy efficiency retrofits and a media company. (Some might think all of these projects reveal an innate instability, though Thomas believes it's more about the Crooked Path he and everyone meander.) He has published a three-book series of The Hour Between One and Two, dark, comedic mysteries set in the international world of tofu and exotic organic imports. More recently he released Aphrodisiac for an Angel, an environmental thriller and mystical romance. Zoëtown Media is making available several other of his compositions, ranging from a graphic novel, a novella and stories, poetry, and 5 Gifts of Bright Presence, true accounts of life-changing encounters

Contents The fox 11 Leaving for church 13 The job 15 Feeling good 17 Miracle dirt 19 Best friend 21 Eyes 23 Paint 25 Intense beginning 27 Keeping it to yourself 29 The Virgin of Another Chance 31 A nap 33 Names and notes 35 When she didn't write 37 Sensitive hands 39 Bow hunters 41 Bicycle exploits 43 Her voice 45 Dreaming of peace and light 47 Natural hearts 49 I don't get it 51 The fox can't resist 53 Sunglasses 55 Rafting 57 Dusk music 59