Look
There was that look
I caught it
What if I had not
Then none of this…
No denying, I had been watching
Just in case
The way one watches for a rainbow
And it lights you up inside
Because you didn’t expect it
Not really, more like just hoping
For a little magic
The buzz and crackle of current
Running through us and
We feel alive!
Not just going through the motions
Not just pretending for our keep
Our egos with blinders on
Steady in some mission
For a few hours it unfurled
Your words I can’t even remember
Just how my smile bloomed under your gaze
This sweetness between us
As I felt discovered by you
A warm bath sinking into
Beads of water on dewy skin
The taste of salt
And private senses opening
But I have been through this before
And knowing how this heat
Has nowhere to go,
in this small hot room
full of instruments
where we meet each week,
Eating itself up
Into a conflagration
Until it burns itself down
I tell myself,
after days lost in that look,
Not this time
And the next encounter
I do not beam
But smile politely
I do not watch for signs
But stay focused on my work
Holding the reins
Of this fiery passion
So that only a kind of love remains
A simmer, not a firestorm
When I see you, I feel it
Memory most fleeting, of a mere look
Brimming with possibilities
Intimacies enacted in imagination
Conveyed without speaking
In the movement of air, in our songs,
The smallest of gestures, tendered
And the unsaid.
Embrace the Paradox 