"The only music is time, the only dance is love",Stanley Kunitz

"I think of this as a love poem. It began in a furious storm on Cape Cod and to me it marked the beginning of the end of summer. It was late August when this storm occurred. And it's a disturbing time for me. I remembered a poem that I had written 40 years before and the poem started, hinging on that line that came to me. The poem is called Touch Me.",words of Stanley Kunitz

TOUCH ME

Summer is late, my heart.
Words plucked out of the air
some forty years ago
when I was wild with love
and torn almost in two
scatter like leaves this night
of whistling wind and rain.
It is my heart that's late,
it is my song that's flown.
Outdoors all afternoon
under a gunmetal sky
staking my garden down,
I kneeled to the crickets trilling
underfoot as if about
to burst from their crusty shells;
and like a child again
marveled to hear so clear
and brave a music pour
from such a small machine.
What makes the engine go?
Desire, desire, desire.
The longing for the dance
stirs in the buried life.
One season only,
and it's done.
So let the battered old willow
thrash against the windowpanes
and the house timbers creak.
Darling, do you remember
the man you married? Touch me,
remind me who I am.
Stanley Kunitz who said the only music is time, the only dance is love.

I am re posting this poem because I have been thinking about it all the time now, how absolutely stunningly eloquent these words are and how they ring so true to who we are as human beings. I am especially drawn to the words,"touch me,remind me of who I am". I was sitting in meditation in my lotus seat this morning after a nice yoga practice. I was looking forward to being in my seat, my space , the lotus position grounding me to earth. I faintly felt my breath brush upon my upper lip, my hands resting in my lap.It was the vaguest of sensations, my own hands touching each other, my own breath gently cloaking the outline of my body. I was reminded of Stanley Kunitz's words, that through the proprioceptive nature of touch we get a physical sensation, a map of ourselves.It is the same sensation when a parent cradles their baby. The infant feels more than comfort, but through being held ,the pressure of the physical contact with another gives the child a sense of the contour of her/him self. The touch of another becomes a container to be contained within one self and to begin to experience the sense of self. I imagine that is why we all crave touch," it reminds us of who are", that we need each other almost on a cellular level because without the experience of being with another or being touched by another through words, poetry,music,touch, we can not really know ourselves that well.We need each other to know ourselves.