Love Poem: After Alphonso Lingis

What I to you

I loved you

But you also meant nothing to me

You were nothing but

A box jellyfish

The edges always coming out to meet the water

A skin of water, not water-blue

So that there was nothing we could find like ourselves

And nothing like a center

So that the animal was not a beak

But a movement forward

So that speech was not a thing to say

But a thing to be attracted to

What silly songs we did find then

And when I went swimming through the pond

I was a transparent body

That went to you

And when I went flying through the air

It was your distinction, not similarity

That called to me

And when I died and my awe

Completely upturned

I held myself, my breath

My spiritus

Which had always swirled around you

In clear folds I knew of, the skin

So that the only indication

Of another world

Were the rain and snow

And when I was reborn again

I was only an infant

But still, you asked me to dance with you

And I did dance with you, my father

Do you remember us both, both babies

Moving closely around the sky

In the icy wind

In the orange water

Full of flies

In the sunny terrain

Of black hills

The home

The home we knew

And even if it takes a while

I will meet you there again