(for James Benning)
The window opens upon the world
limits nothing now three floors up;
no life or death, he looks out at
quiet nothing: only wind reports.
His long hair lifting through the heat,
weft through warp into a moiré;
before his eyes, driving by, she
stops. City life is more than sums
of streets paved with rain and the gait
of grim pedestrians, more than
make-up in the rear-view mirror
and cell phone blather, though one
forgets such things when there is work
and child care and thousand small
items on the the honey-do list.
Her hands twitch; eyes are crusted dry.
These two will never know what they
have seen without so much as meeting
all the possibilities. No frame
reveals the promise of a just look
one more time, and hold: each the
other’s thought-filled, aimless gaze.
