October 2003  

The Healing Touch    © by    Sharon A. Sharp
 

Feverish, your face rests,
pillow cradled and eased
from hacking coughs.
Your hand in mine, I drift
into memory-dreams of giving
birth. “Where in the world?”
your dad had stammered
at first sight of your reddish
fuzz, and I had laughed to see
my granny reborn. So many lives
she touched, one way or another:
Night after night, her bone-set tea
crossed lips as parched as yours.
Mornings, friends hunched
throbbing heads and wheezing chests
over rabbit-tobacco fumes.
She talked the fire from Mama’s burn
and cured the thrash for many a babe.
The woods, her trove, hid nothing
as she reaped the grounded gifts.
Gentle, her hands roused me
to your moan and sideward shift.
“In the sweet by-and-by” she hummed,
guiding my hand to your curls
and smiling in a knowing way.

Previously published in the North Carolina Poetry Society's
Pinesong: Awards 2003. Used with the poet's permission.
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