[Verse 1]
Underneath the skin where your handshake starts,
five long metacarpals hold the fan of your palm apart,
spreading like a deck of cards dealt out in a row,
every knuckle a quiet hinge where the fingers grow.
Count them with me, slow and sure,
one two three four five, the palm's own floor,
then fourteen phalanges climbing like a stair,
tiny bones in tiers, stacked with craftsman's care.
[Chorus]
Five in the palm, fourteen in flight,
two for the thumb, three bones tight,
phalanx by phalanx, row by row,
that's the drill every hand must know.
Palm and fingers, counting the crew,
twenty-seven bones just in one hand's view!
[Verse 2]
Long ago in Greece, before the hand had names,
soldiers locked their shields in lines, a wall that ate the plains,
shoulder against shoulder, that bristling marching wall,
they called it phalanx, a fortress standing tall.
Now look down at your finger, each segment set in place,
soldiers stiff and orderly, bone to bone, face to face,
the thumb gets only two, a shorter little squad,
but every other finger holds three, obeying the same nod.
[Verse 3]
Here's a tale of knuckles: the fifth bone takes the blow,
punch a wall in anger, feel its neck below just go,
they call it boxer's fracture, though boxers rarely land it,
it's the untrained fist that cracks it, wild and unplanned hit.
Now meet Edward Bennett, eighteen eighty-two,
he broke his own thumb's base and studied what it put him through,
the fracture slices inward, into the joint it slides,
his name still rides that injury, an eponym that stays alive.
[Chorus]
Five in the palm, fourteen in flight,
two for the thumb, three bones tight,
phalanx by phalanx, row by row,
that's the drill every hand must know.
Palm and fingers, counting the crew,
twenty-seven bones just in one hand's view!
[Verse 4]
Picture a fingertip that suddenly can't straighten,
the extensor tendon's torn, the joint goes slack and flattened,
sometimes it rips a sliver, a chip of bone torn free,
that stealing of a fragment's called avulsion, plain to see.
Doctors name it mallet finger, the tip droops like a bell,
resting in a splint for weeks until the fibers knit and heal.
But the thumb's own saddle joint, where trapezium turns and clings,
lets it swing across the palm and touch what each finger brings,
that crossing move is opposition, the gift that built our tools,
no other creature pinches quite by following those rules.
[Bridge]
Twenty-seven bones, a tiny orchestra humming,
metacarpals strum the fan, phalanges keep it strumming,
one snapped neck, one cracked base, one tendon torn and slack,
every fracture tells a story written in the stack.
[Chorus]
Five in the palm, fourteen in flight,
two for the thumb, three bones tight,
phalanx by phalanx, row by row,
that's the drill every hand must know.
Palm and fingers, counting the crew,
twenty-seven bones just in one hand's view!