"Your Touch," from Carrying Place
In other centuries, other creatures'
fantasies, on a prehistoric day dense
with heat, some small mammal
brushed the neck of its mate
and ushered in our possibility.

When you have found the place
between my shoulder and
my head, that tough band
that runs in my family
up the neck, you will reach through
the veil of my hair, and press
the weight of history
upon my skin.

You will touch me and
I will remember my first lesson
in evolution: in caves there are fish
who have lost their eyes.
In the dark grottos, the deep waters
they need only touch.

Builders poised on the upper beams
of a tower hauling themselves
into the immaculate
openness of space,
we push into each other, blind
to the future we penetrate.

- Esta Spalding

(via Anansi Press poem of the day | Dec 13, 2003)