mere touch

what else could you say
         about me? she asked.
how many words exist? said i.

i lament that we live
in a world in which lovers
believe they're not worthy

of the inexhaustible words
of their poets, who always
have something to confess.

it's as though she asked me,
how many different ways
          could you touch me?

the answer to which would
seem foolish to those who've
felt the power of either.

to the poet in love's
apprehension, words are the
fount from which touch flows.

i know a poetess and painter
who shares her works with me
and it's like the touch

of the fingers to the
breastbone, behind which
the heart awaits.

mere touch, mere words
the poet is over-generous
with both to those who

are willing to receive,
and neither need meaning
beyond the import to one's soul.

to verse and to touch
have the same end
to this poet:

to give and to take,
to intercourse with
a lover's delicate charity.

consider the lover
and the reader the same
in this example:

radiating, next to me,
back-bared and
placated, yielding.

i listen to her hair
on the pillow when
she turns every so often,

subtle as the sound of
voices in a distant room,
muted soft secrets.

every moment of her darkness
it is required of me that
i put hands on something

of her, some part,
that i may repeatedly
witness a life teeming.

for me, touch is a guide wire
to deep inlets, a current
of the transitory spark.

it does not last, nor
could it any more than
the wick of a candle.

which is quite all right
for this temporal man,
who needs his native fix.

poetry is in no way different.
it requires the touch of the
word upon the lover's

breastbone, received as deeply
as she allows, feeling whatever
comes and no less.

i cannot control the
affect of verse and touch,
which is important.

i want each received and
swallowed, then forgotten
by morning,

so that each new touch,
each new poem, is blushed
over and makes her dizzy.