On Bare Feet

I like to feel the world's surfaces with the bare skin of my feet.
Fingers may have more nerve endings but
toes have been waiting longer to caress the earth's skin
and so seem to appreciate it more.
My feet do not discriminate. They love the light and the dark, the heavy and the soft, the wet and the dry.
The moss-covered rock is a squishy pleasure
that need not compete with the gritty-grey sidewalk cement.
They make love with them both.
And the sand between my toes is as much at home
as the spring grass' shoots that tickle the tips of my toenails.
The cracks between my fingers have never appreciated these sensations as much.
They have been overstimulated and desensitized to the surprising texture of the world's carpets--the gardens, beaches, hills, seashores, ocean floors, tiles and blacktop.
They little mind the difference between hot and cold,
Only noting in a passive scientific difference the fact of freezing and boiling
and pragmatically, they avoid them both.
But my toes and the rough pads of the soles of my feet, the caloused edges and the soft, sheltered arches remain eager to touch the world more.
They have been restrained too long, too often, in a puritanical society's need for the illusion of propriety and cleanliness
but they love to be dirty, to be stained with the sediment,
to remind the rest of my body that we are never long cut off from the land,
that we are married to the soil that will one day reclaim every atom in our bodies
and give them back to the earth to travel for as long as life will go on living.
When I curl my toes, they hug this earth close, and whisper, Thank you.