"The Tao of Touch" by Marge Piercy

The tao of touch by Marge Piercy What magic does touch create that we crave it so. That babies do not thrive without it. That the nurse who cuts tough nails and sands calluses on the elderly tells me sometimes men weep as she rubs lotion on their feet. Yet the touch of a stranger the bumping or predatory thrust in the subway is like a slap. We long for the familiar, the open palm of love, its tender fingers. It is our hands that tamed cats into pets, not our food. The widow looks in the mirror thinking, no one will ever touch me again, never. Not hold me. Not caress the softness of my breasts, my inner thighs, the swell of my belly. Do I still live if no one knows my body? We touch each other so many ways, in curiosity, in anger, to command attention, to soothe, to quiet, to rouse, to cure. Touch is our first language and often, our last as the breath ebbs and a hand closes our eyes. "The tao of touch" by Marge Piercy, from The Hunger Moon: New & Selected Poems, 1980-2010. © Alfred A. Knopf, 2011. Reprinted with permission. From Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac, May 5, 2011.