There are worse things
to hope for than some
lingering touch.
In sleep, cryptically vague
are hazed disillusions
of fingertips against
glass plates,
against the malleable skin
of our humanness.

A suffering long endured,
as we are all akin to the same
nature, not trees falling in
silent forests – we are not
the noisy river tributaries
barreling down mountainsides.
But these meek and less wise
fleshy creatures with only two eyes
and finite time to see all,
the infinitesimal knowledge
that we are useless,
and only desirous of
what destroys us.

The sea does not long for
oil spills, as the wheat does
not pray for locusts' plagues.
We condemn ourselves
to mistakes, fallible
is this mushy skin
encapsulating
all we are and ever will be.

Our hands not as deft
in their embracing as
the wandering tree limbs.
So as our strange bodies
graze each other,
a human heat exchanged
as we are glowing coals,
in a dying fire.

There are more human
cravings than the small caving
of muscle to let us know we
are not all lost, not alone
in the noiseless forests,
we are not floating down streams,
lonely. The indentations left
momentarily on our arms
all we could need.