Here is the poem that made my class cry.....

Touch Me


Summer is late, my heart.
Words plucked out of the air
some forty years ago
when I was wild with love
and torn almost in two
scatter like leaves this night
of whistling wind and rain.
It is my heart that's late,
it is my song that's flown.
Outdoors all afternoon
under a gunmetal sky
staking my garden down,
I kneeled to the crickets trilling
underfoot as if about
to burst from their crusty shells;
and like a child again
marveled to hear so clear
and brave a music pour
from such a small machine.
What makes the engine go?
Desire, desire, desire.
The longing for the dance
stirs in the buried life.
One season only,
and it's done.
So let the battered old willow
thrash against the windowpanes
and the house timbers creak.
Darling, do you remember
the man you married? Touch me,
remind me who I am.

I taught a class for seniors with the Institute for Learning in Retirement last month. The class was titled "Bright Star and Wild Darling: the language of the human heart." It was a course in love poetry.

This was a wonderful experience, if difficult because of my class members crying. But it was a testament to the power of poetry and how it can call us to our highest station of emotion.

My last class was today. It was all fine.

Thank you for the poem. Very lovely.

My class goes until June 20th this year! Lucky you :0)

with courses by people who have some expertise in different subjects. Mine just happened to be poetry.

What do you teach?

I appreciate your support and I hope you really love the poem. It is so good, isn't it?

beautiful.

the poem, your class, the connections ...caring.

K&R

thanks for sharing this

but this one really did it. At first I was sorry, because my intent was not to make anyone cry. But then I realized that with a class of seniors I was talking about the sorrow of love lost mostly from death and I had to rethink the entire idea of the class.

Interesting. But we did have a nice class. Everyone really seemed to like it...

He was a sweet, gentle soul who touched everyone around him. He had an aura of goodness. Too few like him.

Written late in life. And so beautiful. I heard the poet read it; heard his voice break over the last two lines.

Live in the layers, not in the litter.

And thx for sharing