Marge Piercy (1936-)
Implications of one plus one
1Sometimes we collide, tectonic plates merging,
2continents shoving, crumpling down into the molten
3veins of fire deep in the earth and raising
4tons of rock into jagged crests of Sierra.
5Sometimes your hands drift on me, milkweed's
6airy silk, wingtip's feathery caresses,
7our lips grazing, a drift of desires gathering
8like fog over warm water, thickening to rain.
9Sometimes we go to it heartily, digging,
10burrowing, grunting, tossing up covers
11like loose earth, nosing into the other's
12flesh with hot nozzles and wallowing there.
13Sometimes we are kids making out, silly
14in the quilt, tickling the xylophone spine,
15blowing wet jokes, loud as a whole
16slumber party bouncing till the bed breaks.
17I go round and round you sometimes, scouting,
18blundering, seeking a way in, the high boxwood
19maze I penetrate running lungs bursting
20toward the fountain of green fire at the heart.
21Sometimes you open wide as cathedral doors
22and yank me inside. Sometimes you slither
23into me like a snake into its burrow.
24Sometimes you march in with a brass band.
25Ten years of fitting our bodies together
26and still they sing wild songs in new keys.
27It is more and less than love: timing,
28chemistry, magic and will and luck.
29One plus one equal one, unknowable except
30in the moment, not convertible into words,
31not explicable or philosophically interesting.
32But it is. And it is. And it is. Amen.
Copyright 1988 Available Light: Poems by Marge Piercy Alfred A. Knopf
Notes
1] tectonic plates: moving geological platforms in the Earth's crust or upper mantle that are separated by belts of earthquake and volcanic activity at mountain ranges, mid-ocean ridges, and faults, and whose movements cause continental drift.
Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
This poem cannot be published anywhere without the written consent of Marge Piercy, Leapfrog Press or Knopf permissions department.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.
Original text: © Marge Piercy. Available Light: Poems by Marge Piercy (Alfred A. Knopf, 1988): 51-52. PS 3566 I4A94 1988 Robarts Library
First publication date:
1986
Publication date note: Calapooya Collage 10 (Summer 1986): 20
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: RPO 2000.
Recent editing: 2:2002/4/11
Form: quatrains
Rhyme: unrhyming
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