Thank you, David S., for elaborating on the mutuality of touching, the risk involved in touching someone you don’t know. Someone should write ‘The Art of Touching’ and develop a ‘ladder of touching’ starting with eye- or voicecontact and ending with the most touching act of all. One of the details of the photograph fascinating me is the touch of the hands of Erv on the backs of the parents. It is a gentle, careful, polite touch of the fingertips. That’s why I used it in the poem.