I Come Home Wanting To Touch Everyone

Stephen Dunn

The dogs greet me, I descend

into their world of fur and tongues

and then my wife and I embrace

as if we’d just closed the door

in a motel, our two girls slip in

between us and we’re all saying

each other’s names and the dogs

Buster and Sundown are on their hind legs,

people-style, seeking more love.

I’ve come home wanting to touch

everyone, everything; usually I turn

the key and they’re all lost

in food or homework, even the dogs

are preoccupied with themselves,

I desire only to ease

back in, the mail, a drink,

but tonight the body-hungers have sent out

their long-range signals

or love itself has risen

from its squalor of neglect.

Everytime the kids turn their backs

I touch my wife’s breasts

and when she checks the dinner

the unfriendly cat on the dishwasher

wants to rub heads, starts to speak

with his little motor and violin–

everything, everyone is intelligible

in the language of touch,

and we sit down to dinner inarticulate

as blood, all difficulties postponed

because the weather is so good.