Erotics of Detail

“the whole experience
changed,
become physical, charged, sexual, visceral:
passing:
leaving a residue
of tenderness for the failures that have, after all, supplied us with these
interesting scars.”
— Janet Holmes, “The Erotics of Detail”

(Source: Poetry Foundation)

And what, I imagine you asking, of the contemplative erotics of detail, of detritus, of artifacts? What about the texture of healed wounds, swaths torn into forests now lush with regrowth, memories tattooed into bodily patchwork, topography tilted and perforated by industry,…?

Draw the sensitive backside of your hand, your cheek across these tapestries. Listen with your skin. Feel with your ear. Allow yourself to wonder, to remember, to forgive, to yearn.

Time tempers and patinas pain. Context caresses and age augments compassion. Not always. Often.

Five years downriver and the erotics, the details persist.