This poem is from my Tango Apocalypso collection. It’s called Signing Love. I have worked for many years with people with learning and physical disabilities, and have sometimes (rather clumsily) had to use sign language myself to communicate, and have always been inspired by the beauty of signing; the movement of the hands when deaf people communicate, the expressive contact of their eyes and face. As a few of the actors I was working with were deaf, it made me want to write a love poem about two deaf people declaring their love for each other through their own language of signing… I hope you like it.
SIGNING LOVE
Your fingers are lips
Your arms a ripple of passion
Your mouth moves
And I can hear your silence whisper to me
Your hands are moving so delicately
Like butterflies
Like birds in a bell-jar
You are signing your love for me
And it's beautiful!
