Sand

I have a tone inside me
that has not been sounded. Or only once
or twice. Once she went straight to the center
of me, once she could have walked through me
like a tunnel. She could have seen sky
on the other side of me.
I could have washed my hands in sand,
then touched her, turned her to sand.
I’m the opposite of Midas: I want to touch
what’s returning to earth.

Jane Hilberry
Sand first appeared in The Journal, Autumn 1999, is reprinted from Body Painting, (Red Hen Press, 2005), and was featured on Verse Daily on June 4, 2005.