Looking Around

my granddaughter

Looking, Walking, Being

"The world is not something to 

  look at, it is something to be in."

I look and look.

Looking's a way of being: one becomes,

sometimes, a pair of eyes walking.

Walking wherever looking takes one.

The eyes

dig and burrow into the world.

They touch

fanfare, howl, madrigal. clamor.

World and the past of it,

not only

visible present, solid and shadow

that looks at one looking.

And language? Rhythms

of echo and interruption?

That's

a way of breathing,

Breathing to sustain

looking,

walking and looking 

through the world,

in it.

Denise Levertov