Eye-to-Eye

Please forgive this interruption.
I am forging a career,
a delicate enterprise
of eyes. Yours included.
We will meet at the street corner,
you with your sack lunch,
me with my guitar.
We will be wearing our famous street faces,
anonymous as trees.
Suddenly you will see me,
you will blink, hesitant,
then realize I have not looked away.
For one brave second
we will stare
openly
from borderless skins.
This is my salary.
There are no days off.

-Naomi Shihab Nye