Feeling our way

 

Perhaps we are learning to feel

the small stones drifting in the stream

of each other’s silence.

 

Perhaps we are starting to sense

the slippery dark hollows

that lurk among the words said.

 

Perhaps we are tiptoeing in

past shelves of glasses that will

shatter at a loud voice.

 

We are clumsy sometimes

as children pouring grass soup

into broken cups, tentative

 

as porcupines waltzing.

A ladder of hair is flimsy

yet we climb.  Two women

 

much too old not to know

how many friendships have

broken like mirrors of ice,

 

nonetheless we proceed

cautious and slow circling

yet moving steadily closer.

 

            Copyright 2010 Marge Piercy

                   

 

 

 

Midsummer dream

 

I dreamed it was midsummer

not yet hot but warm as skin.
I walked with a friend now dead

my knees whole, climbing

 

without effort.  We passed

a clearing marked for a house

not built, perhaps never

to happen, weeds already

 

encroaching, a strange mud

circle as if made by a huge

wasp.  Then we emerged

from the pines and looked

 

down into a sandy valley

with a finger of bay glinting

at the bottom, all blue

and golden, the pines

 

like exclamation points

and an osprey in midair

floating on powerful wings

all so perfect it woke me.

 

            Copyright 2010 Marge Piercy

                   

 

 

 

The way is damned uncertain

 

I am a cook; I am a poet.

I cook by recipes, either

on paper or in my head

containing possibilities.

 

But each recipe forms

a branching algorithym

for instance: cut up a chicken

and sauté it in olive oil

 

sesame or butter.  Then

add wine red or white,

cider, broth, even rum

or gin.  And so on.  The tree

 

of the recipe bifurcates

again and again and each

outcome makes a different

dish.  But I know the way.

 

With poems, I mostly

never guess where I’m

going till I arrive

or think I have.  Perhaps

 

I’m only halfway up

or down or in.  Perhaps

I’ll retrace my steps and

wander into a blue fog.

 

Perhaps I need to bleed

some more.  Dream harder.

Stare out the window.

Walk to the bay and back.

 

I am a chicken who laid

half an egg.  Out of

what stuff can I forage or

ferment the missing half?

 

            Copyright 2010 Marge Piercy

                   

 

 

 

It doesn’t even resonate

 

The heart ripped out

I would have said, my

flesh a peach from which

the pit has been torn.

 

Now I barely recall

his face.  Am I the same

person, then, or some

replicant, some creature

 

budded off amoebalike

from the woman I was?

My mother’s death has

never left me, a hole

 

that nothing mends.

Yet that man my life

was meshed with, gear

on gear, the engine

 

I thought moved us both

forward through our

days is a memory that

barely tickles my brain.

 

                Copyright 2010 Marge Piercy

                         

 

          

 

Very late November

 

The world around me

is grey and brown now

full of November

all the way up to the sky

of cigarette ash.

 

The last flower shriveled.

I hear no bird except

the great horned owl

rhythmic in the darkness

and a single crow at day

 

break.  Only the wind

brushes against the house

like a cat caressing

my leg.  Nothing

is growing any longer

 

except the silver fish

hook of the moon.

What still lives

waits to sleep or die,

Somewhere to the north

 

snow is gathering

its forces to invade.

It will conquer every

house, bush and road

into a white silence.

 

                Copyright 2010 Marge Piercy