Touch

shadow, sand, friends, photo
poem & photo by Elizabeth
TOUCH

hands awaken 
stars in skin
till our palms
press peace
deep as breath

yet this snow-blind 
animal need for touch
shared by grooming apes
and dogs sleeping entwined
is rarely about sex 

but instead our primal need to know 
we are not stones tossed out to sea
as we breathe the same air
molecules shared
in this brief habitation of skin

Thank you to the editors of 5AM for first publishing this poem.

Elizabeth Oakley Weaver's avatar

By Elizabeth Oakley Weaver

Even as a kid I've said it doesn't matter if I live to be 150: this life will be the blink of an eye. Poet, author, visual artist, photographer, educator and lover of life (though still working on the hard parts like Covid, violence, inequity), I'm completing a memoir inspired by and largely about dogs and people.

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