Barbara Daniels

LET TOUCH BE

That sound is water. Sedges, camellias, 
air join the body. What hurts 
still hurts but a patch of late sun 

comes to warm the blue carpet. I too 
am blue, the back of my body touching 
my chair, blue veins in my legs and wrists. 

Today I saw mason wasps on the milkweed. 
The leaves have been eaten away 
till they’re lacy debris. A bluebird, 

a bunting, a grosbeak sang at each other. Blue 
rivalry. Water smoothed toward me and 
drained from the pond to the creek bed below. 

I wanted to tell you. But my mouth stopped, 
tongue curled behind my front teeth. 
I saw you. You were. Your eyes closed, 

breath slowed, hands moving slightly 
inside your dream. Rhomboids of light 
lay down on your body. In the room 

my fingers moved to soothe my sore feet.
The neighbor’s wrecked car stands silent 
outside. I could tell he loved its clamor,

its booming. Who falls asleep now? 
Let touch be the mother of. The mother 
of sleep. O blue. O breath. A dog barks. 

This glass of water—its translucent belly, 
smooth lip, cold skin—seen through, 
rounds the room into a luminous ring. 

Barbara Daniels’s Talk to the Lioness was published by Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press in 2020. Her poetry has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Mid-American Review, and elsewhere. Daniels received a 2020 fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.