The speaker begins by admitting a habit of mind: seeing other people as bright, glowing things, "rich with use." It sounds generous, as if everyone carries the worn warmth of a life lived. But the next line undercuts it. People are "not" light, and the speaker knows it. The picture is a comfort, not a fact.
What the speaker can't accept is the gap that follows, "not knowing any." We can't really know the people around us, and that bothers them. So the poem turns to a smaller, more physical kind of belief. Instead of claiming to understand anyone, the speaker trusts the moment of hands meeting. The slow, broken lines make that moment feel like a pause: "meeting / present / being us."
The mood is quiet and tender, with a thread of loneliness. Knowledge is out of reach, but touch is enough to start from. The title's "Handshook" fuses the gesture into one word, as if the handshake were a single thing.