This is the second poem and painting from the collaborative show You in Me created by Amy Moon and me. Amy’s poem was a response to my figurative painting.

Just Looking

When I saw you in the dim light, it was barely springtime so dusk came earlier.
The chill was part of the process,
making me stretch gingerly and slowly to remove the stiffness that comes from
a long stillness in the cold.

I looked and your eyes were closed.
So I moved into downward dog alone. With my laundry list of life lessons.
Sighing outloud in unison with the others when told.
Then in flying bird I felt a moment of power and another of grace. All mine.
Afterwards, I walked to my car in the darkness, moving from lamplight to lamplight
with my mat clutched crossways against my chest.

I don’t know who I was then.

Did I plan my next meal?
Or pretend I wasn’t going to eat because I had a big lunch?
Perhaps I felt doomed.
I did. I’m sure of it.
And then got over it by the time I settled into a kitchen chair
and talked to my cats about how nice they were.

But there was something else.
There was me pulling away from another
who wanted me but promised nothing.
Whose eyes were open but unseeing.
I cast my own downward and turned away and stayed away.
And I sucked it up and went to class even when I was late.

Yearning.
To reach and twist and bend.
To stretch long, stretch strong.
To touch the rafters with my open heart.

And then you looked.

I don’t recall if I looked back.
But I knew. And so I looked again.
And then you looked and I looked back.

Who knows what cosmology rears its shaggy head
Shaking its matted ancient mane,
when all you’re doing is looking.

What you see in another
May be crystal-ball known in an instant.
And suddenly everything changes.
Well, almost.
My poses feel the same but the walk to the car has changed.
I am not that person anymore.

I am seen and I see.

~ Amy Moon