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Male Taken from Female

He was torn from her thigh, that first man in Eden--
bone splintered skin, formed into sinews and tendons
of him--but she rose unharmed and walked through
fields, sunlight running down her shoulders and hair
like electricity.  Even before the sixth day, her spirit
lived, for her energy has always been.  Winds moved
with her over earth and fields.  Trees dropped their
succulence into her hands--each fruit carrying its
own seed within.   Small animals, also, rose up in this
time for her touch.  Her right hand stroked the mane
of a black mare that shivered its pleasure beside her.

This first being came from water.  With each footfall,
she felt the rough-textured earth, the early surfaces
of land.   And even before he was formed, man
lived within her--took shape in Eden to help her.
When he sprang from her thigh, rolled over and stood,
she brushed twigs from his hair, dirt from his legs--
as if he were a large child in her care.  Speechless,
he would find words to praise her.  Already, he felt
the fierce longing to return to her steady certainty,
squatted strength.  So it was then and is now--this
story kept from you, a secret  you have always known.

Summer Solstice

I woke this morning with someone else's teeth
in my mouth familiar teeth, but they didn't quite
close.  Standing up, I could see my eyes glinting
green in the mirror-amber sparks radiating out.
These are not the stone-blue eyes I'm used to.

When a strange man walks past my window,
a flicker of lust runs through me a feeling I'd all but
forgotten.  Red lipstick from the dresser?  I unclasp
the top, run the soft cone over my lip.  Its creamy
scent intoxicates.  Even my tangled hair is superb!

The doubtful person I was is leaving. She slips
under the bed like a shadow.  My diet vanishes.
Give me Eggs Benedict, a beignet, and a truffle.
Whatever gripped me in the night in isn't through.
Like an animal, it has me by the scruff, shaking.

Whatever you are, please keep me.  Don't let go.

Contagious Magic

Standing outside in the spring
night under a wide Washington moon–
away from the party voices drifting out...
my husband and our lawyer friends
going on about the need for reason,
as if it were a forgotten deity,
and they, its only acolytes.

“We can’t curtail First Amendment
rights,” a man’s voice...“censor
film and TV....regrettable, but....”
In the silver-blue light, a black Lab
thunders across the yard trying
to mount the neighbor’s Golden.
His color blends with the night, till
jerking motions, trembling
haunches give them away
at the driveway’s edge.

And beside me, the ash tree’s lowest
branch snatches my hair as I step
under it.   The slight sting makes me stop.
In moonlight, the tree seems alive
with a female shape: the trunk has
a woman’s belly–and above: two
mounds,  symmetrical as breasts.  I
place my hand between the mounds,
hoping to feel a heart beating there.

Tonight, I could  free any spirit
in that tree.  Am I mad or drunk
sipping the last Zinfandel?  I smash
the glass on slate. If  the tree seems
alive and I bold, the night is
that warm, the stakes are just that high.

The Spiral

To the men whose bodies lied when
they pushed into me, lovers who
thought my love was free and disposable
as diapers of the baby they did not
care if they left with me--as if their
most intimate acts had no consequence.

A man like that is without power;
has not learned to take it up, so that
when he marries his body to a woman
in the dark, he becomes like an amputee--
with part of himself cut away--or a brain-
empty being thrashing around in a fit
of misunderstanding of who he is and why
anything he does with his body matters.

I have done the same thing, myself:
taken my clothes off for a man
I did not love, as if that most revealing act
were just a pill to take to feel better--
or a convenience, like using a doormat
to get the caked mud off my shoes
before entering another reality.

But the doorway is dark.  It leads to
the soul, where the helix between men
and women exists, where Yum, the whirl-
wind spirit with full range of motion, raises
the circle of life toward calm.  In this place
of spiral and scent, there are only two ways
to travel.  Let yours be the way leading up.

This poem first appeared in So to Speak:
A Feminist Journal of Language and
Art, Autumn, 1998.

© All Copyright, Patricia Gray.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.