sex - poem
Strolling through her prim mid-July garden
we pause in what passes for afternoon shade
beneath a peach tree. Koan after koan
and finally I'm getting it, this new position
she calls the still point in the turning wheel.
I don't think I'm that coordinated, but
she says in Zen the mastering of an art
is the mastering of one's being.
The mastering I get. I tell her again she's
more radiant than a snow of peach blossoms.
The Zen archer, she reminds me, spends years
learning to properly nock, draw, shoot
before mastering the art of letting go,
of letting the arrow shoot itself. No,
not suicide! her sigh the only breeze.
The target is the self, annihilation
through consistent hitting of the bull's-eye
the way of merging with the One.
No, not master baiting! she should say
as I look puzzled at a worm, noticing
the tree is full of ripening peaches, some
green, some blushed bursting juicy. I lean
against a branch oozing sticky sap
I'm dying to taste. Parched I say:
But you said archery you do alone, you
become a master when you and arrow and target
are one process, one entity, you know
archery so well it's literally a part of you.
Consider breath, she says, noticing no doubt
my panting.
In Greek the same word for breath
means spirit. The archer learns to breathe
in earth -- hold, shoot -- breathe out sky.
Breathing becomes emptying of mind and self.
Only the truly empty can be filled
with enlightened realization that
despite many targets, there is only
one bull's-eye. We began by discussing
the art of flower arranging, but now
I'm so scorcher thirsty I could
drink her sweat, I could suck blood
from a peach stone or an arrow. She says:
Drawing the bow is the moment of highest
tension preceding ecstasy: death, creative
eros, orgasm. In a relationship
you focus on your lover so intensely that
you and she and sex melt into one experience.
You lose your sense of boundaries, not in a
co-dependent sense: your finite, temporal
external self melts away and your spirit fuses
with her spirit. A blackbird lands on a branch
above us and noisily devours a peach. I lick
my lips, noticing bees, a swarm of lucky gnats.
You don't lose your individuality, she says,
in fact the sense of your unique self,
the core spirit, is heightened.
All the generic melts away. You are left
with your true absolute essence merging
with the absolute essence of the other.
When the two are one they are
most fully two: The Zen of paradox.
Koan after koan, but I'm finally getting it.
First you must kill your parents, she quotes,
then you must kill the Buddha, and then
you must kill me. I reach up
and pluck us a peach, warm and luscious.