A Poem For Today - Touch Me

[KEN DICKINSON]

Touch Me

 

Summer is late, my heart

Words plucked out of the air

some forty years ago

when I was wild with love

and torn almost in two

scatter like leaves this night

of whistling wind and rain.

It is my heart that's late,

it is my song that's flown.

Outdoors all afternoon

under a gunmetal sky

staking my garden down,

I kneeled to the crickets trilling

underfoot as if about

to burst from their crusty shells;

and like a child again

marveled to hear so clear

and brave a music pour

from such a small machine.

What makes the engine go?

Desire, desire, desire.

The longing for the dance

stirs the buried life.

One season only,

                         and its done.

So let the battered old willow

thrash against the windowpanes

and the house timbers creak.
Darling, do you remember

the man you married? Touch me,

remind me who I am.

 

Stanley Kunitz