Two
By Linda Hogan
The weight of a man on a woman
is like falling into the river without drowning.
Above, the world is burning and fighting.
Lost worlds flow through others.
But down here beneath water’s skin,
river floor, sand, everything
is floating, rocking.
Water falls through our hands as we fall through it.
And when a woman and a man come up from water
they stand at the elemental edge of difference.
Mirrored on water’s skin,
they are fired clay, water evaporating into air.
They are where water turns away from land
and goes back to enter a larger sea.
A man and a woman are like those rivers,
entering a larger sea
greater than the sum of all its parts.
Copyright Credit: Linda Hogan, “Two” from The Book of Medicines. Copyright © 1993 by Linda Hogan. Reprinted by permission of Coffee House Press. www.coffeehousepress.org
Source: The Book of Medicines (Coffee House Press, 1993)