After Buchenwald: Escaped, Running, They meet as Strangers in a Bright Field

They stood, stopped, still and blinking.
Stunned,
breathing and blinking,
returned against odds to the sweet,
sweet world—
wild grass, wide air, and the sun
like a mother.
They were stunned
with luck.
Over days they would
say their names aloud.
Over years they would
untwine their hard coiled stories.
But then, there,
they carefully touched
each the other’s skin—
the inside of the wrist,
the quick pulse at the throat,
the high bone of the cheek—
and noted, each, the sheen
of it, the shadow sign:
their skins still slick
with the caul of spit
of the snakes
from which they’d run.