HUG
The older I get, the more I like hugging,
When I was little the people hugging me were much larger.
In their grasp I was a rag doll.
In adolescence, my body was too tense to relax for a hug.
Later, after the loss of virginity—
which was anything but a loss—
the extreme proximity of the other person,
the smell of hair, the warmth of the skin,
the sound of breathing in the dark—
these were mysterious and delectable.
This hug had two primary components:
the anticipation of sex and the pleasure of intimacy,
which itself is a combination of trust and affection.
It was this latter combination that came to characterize the hugging
I have experienced only in recent years,
a hugging that knows no distinctions of gender or age.
When this kind of hug is mutual,
for a moment the world is perfect the way it is,
and the tears we shed for it are perfect too.
I guess it is an embrace.
— Ron Padgett
from You Never Know © Coffee House Press
You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present.
~ Jan Glidewell
Love/Life Poems
