Off The Trail Poem by gershon hepner

Off The Trail



Identify, when off the trail,
the secret hiding space between
the thighs, between the head and tail,
that’s destined to remain unseen,
but felt by fingers that explore
it like a field that must be tilled,
once opened like a secret door,
awaiting seed until it’s filled
by means moves made in the furtive
pursuit of hidden depths that lie
expectantly in wait, assertive
until they close and mystify.

Dana Goodyear, in the New Yorker, October 20,2008, writes about the Zen poet, Gary Snyder, quotes from “The Bath” (“Zen Master: Gary Snyder and the art of life”) :
Sweating and panting in the stove-steam hot-stone
cedar-planking wooden bucket water-splashing
kerosene lantern-flicker wind-in-the-pines-out
sierra forest ridges night—
Masa comes in, letting fresh cool air
sweep down from the door
a deep sweet breath
And she tips him over gripping neatly, one knee down
her hair falling hiding one whole side of
shoulder, breast, and belly,
Washes deftly Kai’s head-hair
as he gets mad and yells—
The body of my lady, the winding valley spine,
the space between the thighs I reach through,
cup her curving vulva arch and hold it from behind,
a soapy tickle a hand of grail
The gates of Awe
That open back a turning double-mirror world of
wombs in wombs, in rings,
that start in music,
is this our body?

She quotes Snyder:

Throughout human history and prehistory, the trail was only to get somewhere. What was important was off the trail. Food, roots, berries, dye plants, glue plants, poisonous plants, recreational drug plants, squirrel nests, bird nests, everything you think you might need. What’s way off the trail are places you go to be alone and have a vision and your own spiritual trip, maybe with some of those recreational plants—knowing snickes from the kids—and then you come back.


10/15/08

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