Oh, Natatation...

Two

*

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.

-from

The Book of Medicines

The Poet