How are you doing? I’m having little aha! moments. Like when I realize what I’m missing in this season – casual contact with others for example – the everyday connections that are beyond family. The way you reach out and squeeze someone’s elbow when you want to emphasize something, or move closer to talk privately or intimately. Do you also do this? It’s something like an internal commentary that sounds like: ‘Right there, I would have moved closer; or, I want to reach out and touch this person, but I can’t. So how do I indicate that’s what I want to do, without doing it?; or, The negative aspect — this person is getting way too close…what do I do?...even as you’re already inching away at a speed that doesn’t feel like a condemnation. Our social laws of proxemics are being rewritten and it feels horrible.

On the other hand, I feel like the question, “How are you?” is so much more important in this season. Important, because I find I really want to know how you are – I’m not just being polite. Important because a verbal exchange has to be has to the invitation for us to speak about what’s happening when half our face which is helpful for conveying mood is masked. This little question opens the door and then we have to get creative. Now it requires imagination, overstatement and any poetic device that we can muster, to let each other know how much we care. It’s awkward — but let’s just own the awkward everyone. I will if you will.

Who touched me?

It was probably an accident,
or a faux pas of social distancing,
but I, still startled by the touch,
looked down surprised, and said,
“Excuse me Bee! I’m sorry.”

But he didn’t stop working
in the clover. What was it
that made me think he knew
about the scarcity of touch?
These are lonely days

so that soft and gentle nudge
became a gift like a kiss
on the skin of my shin,
when I walked in the clover
where the bee bumped into me!

© 2020 Laurel Archer

PS – it may just be my over active imagination, but there was something in this poem that reminded me of the ‘collision’ that Jesus had with a woman who was in need of healing. “Who touched me?” is the question Jesus asked. Healing, help, wholeness is transferred in the connection, collision, touch. Perhaps a collision with a bee transmits just enough healing to produce a whimsical poem — I’ll take it!