Learning to touch

Premature babies live longer
when stroked like tiny dogs
in plastic shells.

Hearts speed up
for the feel of hands smoothing
baldness and fragility.

The ugly nurses stay late
to comfort
their loneliness like

miniscule pink miracles.

Old men stop by the windows
and look in
at death's opacity.

Learning to touch,
we imagine the world
as a giant mother

who must give us up,
naked animals,
to the human wilderness.