My memory grows dodgy
My brain transposes numbers
so an address 712 becomes 721.
How many times I correct my
credit card digits. I forget
names of those once secret
sharers, lovers, visitors who
lay in our beds, those who
carried knives they plunged
in my back or heart. Gone
like dust swept out the door.
Part of me goes with them.
Sections of my life dimmed
into flickering shadows
cast on a wall at night.
• • •
We make it daily
You make coffee every morning
and the coffee tastes like love.
I make healthy suppers that fill
your mouth with delicious ardor.
You massage my sore back;
I wash loads of your clothes.
We marry each other every time
we plan our gardens or days.
We’re both porcupines sensing
wrongs that don’t exist, prickly
and wary. But still we trust,
patch up any tears or holes.
Love isn’t a cocoon; we both
stride into our days, cherish
our friends, our work – But
our true home is each other.
• • •
What’s on the menu
Some pleasures remain
in old age: I prefer my own
cooking to anyone else’s
including fancy chef’s.
I enjoy a good wine, any
color but mostly dry.
I enjoy a hot bath, scented
bath oil or salts: soaking
eases my joints. I enjoy
my Woody and my cats.
They both give me love
and make me laugh.
No longer driven by sex
into spiked or soiled beds
we come together more
gently but still with passion.
I enjoy an engrossing
poem or novel. My land,
what I can still garden
now in raised beds.
Sun in spring waking
the woods and garden
moonlight in bedroom
stars wheeling over trees.
My world was vast but
now is smaller, cozy.
I dream less and sleep
is the only drug I desire.
I see my limits while
the door still stands open
and so does my sore
body to what I love.
• • •
Marge Piercy has published 20 poetry collections, most recently, On the Way Out, Turn Off the Light [Knopf, September 30, 2020], and 17 novels including Sex Wars. Reissues include Vida, Dance the Eagle to Sleep, The Cost of Lunch, Etc, and My Body, My Life. She has read at more than 500 venues in the U.S. and abroad.