Touch

TOUCH

To touch to touch

is all there is, all there ever was. Yet we are made afraid, dis

trust what is most to us, spend

so much of what could have been

love, constructing an excuse for it, some

permissible context, some name, until

what is love is

not love is

no longer even rememberable, not song, but

more like a dove sound, like

that, that pressing of air on the throat.

And we are smothered by it, are

too much alone. Our song

is skin, we must sing,

must touch, it

is time.

David Franks