Poem: Encounter

Encounter

I had not expected
quite so deep or true
or close, had not
been aware 
that was the real art.
I knew what I saw
but that is nothing.
That is the surface.
There is what you hold
and take inside,
there is the heart of it all
which is there
but also secret,
and now I am here
on the side
where it is known,
where the shape of it
is known.  I have understood,
when I return
to what is here,
it is not 
what it was,
is another thing,
and something else, again.

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