Hands touching places never touched.
Forearms with a river flowing between two bones.
Panning for the gold in your hands,
I find reflections of everyone you’ve been –
Like a pear in underwear,
I run from spine to thigh.
Wondrous sacrum to greater trochanter go I.
Normally, no one knows I’m there.
When I touch the ribs of time in your life
Arising from your lovely chest, church’s eaves
Sing to the sky, ascending birds free of strife
Sunward heart’s hope, updraft of colored leaves.
Who took the first breath?
And who the last?
Who knew first the plants’ generosity
Enlivening the animal world?
Skin remembers how long the years grow
when skin is not touched, a gray tunnel
of singleness, feather lost from the tail…
If you love the body you must know the bone
that ribs and peoples it; deeper than flesh you feel
the beauty. That will last, simply as stone
upheaves in season where the winter rain
rakes asters and drooping cornstalks from a hill.