OUT OF TOUCH

All sense is touch,
in a sense, with intervening
distance. With hearing we touch
waves of air or water and know
the motion of what sent them
(and touching the motion, know
across distance of selfhood, meaning).
With sight we touch light and know
with what force and degree of integrity
it bounced off or tore itself away from
what last it touched. Even smell
is the touch of chemical to chemical,
one sating with its excess the other's
craving. All these senses receive
couriers of distant news. Remove
all distance and we touch as now,
my love, I touch you...

Whence, then,
impervious to all my messengers,
this distance?


Note: When in closest conceivable touch, closer than flesh permits (if we were only flesh), in an instant (quicker than a bright day goes gray as a cloud slides over the sun), impossible distances intervene, sudden doubts open wider and deeper than the Grand Canyon and, as quickly, vanish. It seems, in our own universes we have distances and spaces whereof neurochemistry knows nothing.