I miss skin

Afternoon sunlight poured across the street.

Sometimes it seems I am just a passenger on this journey. While others seem to be able to plot their course, I am like dandelion fluff blowing in the wind. Fortunately, it's continues to be a gentle wind; one that brings me words in the middle of the night, words that arrive unbidden, sometimes drifting away without a farewell, sometimes demanding their space on the page.

During the day, I follow the action: war and the stock market, truth and lies, courage and cowardice. At night, though, something else takes over, something seemingly unrelated to the schemes of man. It makes me wonder about the longer sleep to come. None of this leaves me with answers, simply words untranslated.

I miss skin

I miss skin,

The naked length of one body 

Meeting another in unworded exploration,

Blind fingers on the surface of acceptance,

Searching for openings to the other,

Yearnings beyond eyes or ears,

Connection lit pore to pore.

I wonder at the truth 

of my brown-splotched skin

masking the still wide-eyed child.

While old bones dream-remember

skipping and the lightness of spring,

I envy the vitality of the never old river, 

The steadiness of the slowly old cottonwood, 

The loveliness of the forever young sky.

Deep beneath skin lies the damp bed rock of me,

Multi-colored pebbles polished by wind and rivers of time,

Microscopic sands worn through canyons of being,

Each grain neither perfect nor planned,

simply life in an achingly slow lane, 

speeding toward a cliff unseen.

In the greyed world of memory and time,

It is the loneliness of untouched skin 

That wakes me in the night.