James Crews

James Crews was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. He is the author of The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy; How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope; and Every Waking Moment: Poems. And many more. James  lives with his farmer husband in Vermont, on Wabanaki and Mohican land.

Touch

We are changed

by the smallest gestures

of touch, as when

in my mother’s final days

I smoothed the loose

gray hairs back

from her face as she

shivered all over,

smiling with pleasure.

“Like a bolt of lightning

shooting through me,”

she said, the threads

of her mind beginning

to unravel, although

I think we both knew 

she was talking about love.

— James Crews