Dogs take new friends abruptly and by smell, <br />Cats' meetings are neat, tactual, caressive. <br />Monkeys exchange their fleas before they speak. <br />Snakes, no doubt, coil by coil reach mutual knowledge. <br /> <br />We then, at first encounter, should be silent; <br />Not court the cortex but the epidermis; <br />Not work from inside out but outside in; <br />Discover each other's flesh, its scent and texture; <br />Familiarize the sinews and the nerve-ends, <br />The hands, the hair - before the inept lips open. <br /> <br />Instead of which we are resonant, explicit. <br />Our words like windows intercept our meaning. <br />Our four eyes fence and flinch and awkwardly <br />Wince into shadow, slide oblique to ambush. <br />Hands stir, retract. The pulse is insulated. <br />Blood is turned inwards, lonely; skin unhappy ... <br />While always under all, but interrupted, <br />Antennae stretch ... waver ... and almost ... touch. <br /> <br /> <br />Submitted by Stephen Fryer<br /><br />Arthur Seymour John Tessimond<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/meeting-3/
