Looking down, the speaker feels a quiet shock: her hands seem unknown, as if they’ve never really been hers. That uncanny moment of self-estrangement doesn’t frighten her, though. Instead, it leads to a soft, wondering thought — maybe another woman, long ago, had hands exactly like these. The connection is delicate, almost a daydream, bridging the speaker to an unnamed ancestor or a past version of herself. The title, “Amaze,” is an old word for being lost in bewilderment, and that mood fills every short line: a hushed astonishment, a feeling of drifting outside ordinary time. The poem leaves you suspended in that quiet, strange intimacy with a body that feels both yours and not, tied to others through invisible threads.
Amaze — Summary
I know Not these my hands And yet I think there was A woman like me once had hands Like these.