This week at dVerse Poets Pub, De aka Whimsygismo has reached out her writing hand with a challenge of a Touching Quadrille: A poem of exactly 44 words, including the word ‘touch’ or one of its derivatives.

What’s not to like? Where not to begin? I had several false starts, tentative touches, before I felt bold enough to dance upon the keyboard.

I recall a state during 2020-2023 that could be described as Touch-Deprivation, during Coronopause and therafter. I was living alone, far away from family and most of my friends. First from choice and then from necessity. Involving a journey into breast surgery and cancer treatment where I felt very socially and emotionally distanced, and isolated. Untouchable.

Yet never completely alone, because there was always something called “community” to connect with, if I dared. An international community of poets one day, a community of shradda, faith, another. My neighbours exchanging greetings and support, especially during Lockdown.

Communities of 1960s schoolfriends from Chester or Hatfield. Urban and village communities from Cambridge, Willingham, Longstanton and Brora. Botanists in Caithness, Sutherland, Fen Edge and Northumberland. Earth Path walkers from Shropshire, the Highlands of Scotland, Girton, and Norfolk.

Communities of siblings and soul-siblings. Communities of relatives and their partners, spanning centuries and even millennia. Communities of the many versions of myself.

Back to Touch, a sensory pathway that I have been shyly exploring for decades, and in which I first began to feel a real confidence through free-dance, way back in the 1960s and again from the 2010’s onwards. I’m again in training so I can continue to offer Yellow Petal Touch, my expression of personal healing in this world.

For today, and to stay in touch with the quadrille challenge, I offer this:

Yellow Petals, Touching

touched string, ring true
bring truth to all I do
my tautness attuned to the best in you:
singing melodies ever-new

breathe with the Spirit, whose-ever kiss
gazes freely the Realms of Bliss -
nor flinches from "whatever-there-is" -
rekindling witness: "just like this"

© Kathy Labrum McVittie 20 February 2024