A Simple Touch

by Eve Castle

The womb-like night
swathes a day spent tracking railroad ties
overgrown with thistle, easing barbed wire
and gathering stones.
Cooling sweet tea from tins
with apples, cheese and crumbling beer biscuits
and finally sleep;
where our fingers embrace
warmth and light of embers
and hazy heady smoke of campfire
join the scent of dirt and wild sage.
We drift ‘til morning.

Hasten forward in years
to a night alone. No electricity
after a triple digit Texas day.
Windows married to sills croak apart.
The barely breeze doesn’t cool, doesn’t whisper
neighbor’s voices form an unfamiliar rattle.
Vodka pours well over dripping ice.

As the sun forsakes, the quiet turns restless.
Hues of darkening sky deliver an ache
dim beat of candle flame turns memoir
to a long ago camp.
The dawn,
far end of this abyss
is life, is death
and a simple touch
a distant star.


There is something deeper about the darkness when the air-conditioning isn't working! The idea for this came one such long night in uncomfortable darkness. I had time to reflect on more simple times when people lived without the comforts we now take for granted. I was able to feel my aloneness more clearly. Although I used the outdoor camp memory in the poem, my thoughts flowed even further back to caveman days. In those times we were more dependent on each other for company, entertainment, protection, community and just for feeling connected. In our current world that is filled with telecom, laptops, and that box we call tele "vision" we have lost something. Perhaps we can call it the loss of clearly knowing, understanding and feeling alone.

As human beings we have a fundamental need for others. That need is masked by electronic games and other diversions of today's world. If you get a chance, shut down all you have that electricity makes happen and sit in the dark, in the quiet, with only the sound of the insects and your heartbeat for company. Listen to the sound of your thinking. Enter that abyss.

You may find yourself wishing upon a star and thinking of the break of day as life, but also as death... because with the light - with all that electricity brings - you are back to your routine and your need for others diminishes in importance as you fill your time with noise.

This poem was published in a chap book, Gabe's Poets Still Searching, December 2009.