seeing you

Alan Harris

when I look you

in the eye I find

history and mystery

not to be known

even as your own eye

presses me like a white

daytime moon nudging

soft against an open sky

right in front of outer space

leading to everything else

that flies and falls including

any flying-falling maple seed to bring

an unfoldment of up and down

(now don't the sprawling-upward limbs

and thirsty spreading-downward roots

trace out a delicate explosion so slow

so sweet that the tree has to yes die

to go bare

to fall

to rot

to sleep

to have been all of

what a tree is

all of?)

but how I look at you

my very alter-life

is as moon over healthy tree

at play in sunlight

in behind your eye

behind your inner eye

behind the innerness of your inner eye

behind even behindness

all the way back to

here I am across a table

from your most amazing being

wondering if you see

what journey is behind me

all the way to here

All