HOMAGE TO MASSAGE
for Mee-Mee
You scampered into the makeshift room, barely
noticeable, your friendly features: you. So much
in pain was I, the customer who’d plunked down
Visa for such extravagant refreshment, you had
to touch on every knot and node and groan-
point I could feel. Eyes shut, my head face down
inside a hole, I breathed my sighs back in.
I breathed in oil, soft medicated silence, you.
Letting me breathe, young you, so young,
paid playful homage through your nurse-like art.
Back kinks and other knotted stops uncoiled.
“Your hair,” you said, “so beautiful, so nice.”
With that, I weigh your newness to this world,
measure your years and mine; our love of what
we do. Your smiles and sturdy pulls, your fingers
sometimes feathers, sometimes wheels to track
light’s pathways through the body in the dark.
We handed ourselves over. Who knows what clicked?
Al Young
Copyright © 2008
