Juncture

In Book VIII of Paradise Lost, Adam and Eve entertain

the Archangel Raphael in Paradise. At the end of a pleas-

ant luncheon during which the angel tells too many

secrets of Heaven and the Universe, Adam tells the angel

of his own erotic infatuation with Eve. When Raphael

warns of the dangers of abdicating reason, Adam turns

table and asks Raphael if the angels enjoy sexual relations

like those that delight him so dangerously? Raphael

blushes and responds,

Whatever pure thou in the body enjoy'st

(And pure thou wert created) we enjoy

In eminence, and obstacle find none

Of membrane, joint, or limb, exclusive bars:

Easier than Air with Air, if Spirits embrace.

Total they mix, Union of Pure with Pure

Desiring; nor restrain'd conveyance need

As Flesh to mix with Flesh, or Soul with Soul.

Pure we were that late summer week

Ten years ago in the Land of Rain

So blessedly dry that, strong as we,

Light succeeded in finding our lives

Hid in the least of a ring of huts

That made a Mom and Mom motel-

Two husky owners (Mim and Dit),

Big laughers both with dutchboy bobs,

Yapper dogs, a first-rate kitchen,

Fake pond size of a wading pool

In which tired travelers fished their dinner,

Famished trout longing for the pan

(You dropped your hook; they struck like sharks)

And just the shaggy butt of Mount Hokum

Between our sleep and the ocean endlessly

Gloating beyond.

Though we hadn't confessed it,

What we were after was finding the walls,

Nets, bars, traps, hooks

In both our minds that foiled the mute

Clandestine will, total mixture.

The second day you'd planned a trip

Up the Mad River in a mail-tourist launch-

Dawn as our flat hull spanked up the delta,

Struggling past unthinkable hemlocks,

Eagles thick as gnats on the boughs

And bald as Mount Shasta, pioneer wives

In aprons and grins avid for news.

Lunch on a clutch of languid rocks;

You half-bare, an arm's reach past me

On a private slab, amply rewarding

The sun with partial views of a form

Well-made as anything animate between

The southernmost cell of your pelt and the first

Live sequoia, all rings intact

With saber-tooth clawmarks hid in the heart

(My thought, not yours who hardly knew

The point of a mirror). How did I nap?

You napped, I mimed exhaustion and followed.

Cool afternoon, the rush downstream.

Safe back, drugged with calm, I flung

My slack bones prone on the broad bed

To sleep an hour of late gold air

Until you woke me with a rocking hand

On the nameless plane where vertebrae stop,

Your blue eyes the streaming core of the room,

All the rooms we'd warmed in six years-

Cofnflower brands that signed a way,

Lights that hailed me on you from the start.

I swam up ready at the silent call-

Silent because you'd never yet

Conceded the force that worked your eyes,

Hands and body: rank as roots

That shatter tombs through generations-

And found your determined face, astounded.

You granted at last a hunger deep

As the parched moon's pull on the nutrient tide;

And you worked on slow but worked in time,

Disclosing me to the failing day,

Cherishing me with the grave obeisance

Of newborn creatures to their generous kin,

Then bearing down on me at angelic angles

More intricate, more deeply cut

On the air's dry plane than any meeting

In Euclid's dream of perfect juncture-

Mitred joints so true no chink

Of sun could pry.

At the tall apex,

Open-eyed, I prowled the reaches

Of your whole mind-each muffled plan,

The throttled shames, pockets of joy

And dauntless trust-till in one broad

Eventual glide, I was all you,

You me, we single.

An actual minute

In man-made glare so loud the walls

Refused to hold it, tossed it back

To baste our single glorious hide;

And then before the bond could part,

I rose on you and repaid the gift

With ample interest, a fortune earned-

Unshielded passage to all my life:

Each craven, brave or baffled atom

Offered frank for your inspection

In unconditional surrender

That you accepted with a speechless smile.

Forty minutes, give or take,

We strode that dense seraphic air-

No self, one mind.

Then slept and woke

In early evening, light enough

To guess your face and you guess mine-

Familiar grounds, separate as twins.

I think we called our daily names;

I know we proudly thanked ourselves.

No other mention, then or since,

Of a grace to match man's acquisition

Of the use of fire or the principle

That trees make wood and wood feeds flame

Or Adam's retrospect of Eden

From the stony ground he'd dig for bread.

Ten years gone, four more meetings,

Earnest tries with wiser minds

And grand results in grander rooms

But not again-never, none,

With no one else, not that cellular

Transmigration when willing you

And willing I made of our selves

One sizable brief kind holocaust

To be, in one dim rented room,

A speechless broad tall compound creature:

Fragrant, fertile, unforeseen

And soon extinct-its only future,

The white museum of these black lines,

Whatever selves we bear from here

Through later fates in tranquil hands.

No complaint-endless praise,

Thanks the length of this conscious life:

An afternoon's pure desiring;

Entire union, unrestrained.