Seen & Heard Today

This video of 300,000 starlings in flight is hypnotically beautiful.  It’s like catching a fleeting glimpse of God’s perfection.

Michael Hyatt’s blog is one of the very best.  His latest posting is so valuable.

I do not know Dan Bouchelle, but I appreciate this piece in his “Confessions of a Former Preacher” blog.  This particular essay is on resisting the urge to squash hope in the young.  Anyone over 40 should read it.

I really love Garrison Keillor’s “The Writer’s Almanac.”  A recent edition carried this gorgeous and evocative poem.

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

 

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