Implications of One Plus One

Implications of one plus one
- Marge Piercy

Sometimes we collide, tectonic plates merging,

continents shoving, crumpling down into the molten

veins of fire deep in the earth and raising

tons of rock into jagged crests of Sierra.

Sometimes your hands drift on me, milkweed's

airy silk, wingtip's feathery caresses,

our lips grazing, a drift of desires gathering

like fog over warm water, thickening to rain.

Sometimes we go to it heartily, digging,

burrowing, grunting, tossing up covers

like loose earth, nosing into the other's

flesh with hot nozzles and wallowing there.

Sometimes we are kids making out, silly

in the quilt, tickling the xylophone spine,

blowing wet jokes, loud as a whole

slumber party bouncing till the bed breaks.

I go round and round you sometimes, scouting,

blundering, seeking a way in, the high boxwood

maze I penetrate running lungs bursting

toward the fountain of green fire at the heart.

Sometimes you open wide as cathedral doors

and yank me inside. Sometimes you slither

into me like a snake into its burrow.

Sometimes you march in with a brass band.

Ten years of fitting our bodies together

and still they sing wild songs in new keys.

It is more and less than love: timing,

chemistry, magic and will and luck.

One plus one equal one, unknowable except

in the moment, not convertible into words,

not explicable or philosophically interesting.

But it is. And it is. And it is. Amen.