Subtle Touch: Koans, Poems, and the Body of Awakening

So this is the " uh-oh, poetry" section. Many poets are good at conjuring the sense of " subtle touch" that can be provoked by what we see or hear, making it palpable. Sometimes the focus is observed kinetic rhythm; sometimes it's intuited texture. These seem to register bodily for the poet. Reading the poem, we can feel them echo again in us. So poetry does a nice job of playing the role of the finger pointing at the moon, priming us for a sense of subtle touch we can carry back into the world, and into our practice with koans. Walt Whitman is especially good at evoking both the pervasive background aspect of subtle touch and the dramatic thusness of some particular creature looming forward to fill our awareness.