apoetreflects:
The Wetness
I wanted to write a simple poem
about the wetness between a woman’s legs
and what kind of holy moment it is
when the man’s hand quietly moves south
over the smooth curve of the belly
into the shade of that other hemisphere
and his fingertips find hidden in dark fur
the seam already expectant in its moistness.
I wanted to write about that moment
as if it was full of incense,
and monks holding up their Latin like a torch
deep inside a cavern of Gregorian chant,
but if I write that, someone will inevitably say What
has that romantic foofaw got to do
with the beleaguered realities of love?
or with the biological exigencies of lubrication?
or with the vast, retarded hierarchies
of human suffering? …
But to the man, the wetness is a blessing,
for which there is no history;
a coin than cannot be counterfeit.
And when the man’s fingers reach it
the wetness ripples upward like a volt,
a cool wind, an annunciation;
and he tastes it,
as if his hand was a tongue
he had sent ahead of him.
I wanted to write a poem about the wetness
between a woman’s legs
but it got complicated in language—
It is a wetness a man would make for himself
if he could,
if he could only reach
that dry part of him,
or if he could show
just part of the relief he feels
when he finds out
he is not a thousand miles from home.
That he will not have to go
into the country of desire alone.
—Tony Hoagland, from The American Poetry Review (v. 40, no. 1, Jan/Feb 2011)