The Intangible Poem by Gordon R Menzies

In fifty years my skin has thickened, I think
because these brief days I feel the less, my
touch seems less able to sense surface
or draw the substance of the thing near
so that my attention can embrace it, so
my other senses can come do their part
I find myself reaching for fire and thorn
pressing and pressing again, disbelieving
in a wild cry of tactile desperation, and
yet I keep finding myself on the wrong side
unable to hold the things I once did
in the manner that I once did
my hands are world-weary, I think, or
my heart no longer thrills in their travels

I am coming to understand safe-crackers
and sandpaper applied to raw fingertips