The hands you love to touch

"A Work of Artifice" by Marge Piercy

The bonsai tree
in the attractive pot
could have grown eighty feet tall
on the side of a mountain
till split by lightning.
But a gardener
carefully pruned it.
It is nine inches high.
Every day as he
whittles back the branches
the gardener croons,
It is your nature
to be small and cozy,
domestic and weak;
how lucky, little tree,
to have a pot to grow in.
With living creatures
one must begin very early
to dwarf their growth:
the bound feet,
the crippled brain,
the hair in curlers,
the hands you
love to touch.

Aside from attempting to read my first Dickens (Great Expectations), I also got "To Be of Use", a collection of Marge Piercy's poetry. "The Work of Artifice" is the first poem in the  compilation and it instantly hit me.

Its awesome. Subtle violence but very powerful.