Marge Piercy

James R. Whitley

The Dead at Night

The dead do come out at night.
They walk through our dreams
trailing veils of discontent.
They float on the wind of darkness
whispering soft reproaches.

The worst part is to see
those faces precise as knives
as they never appear in waking
memory, to see, to see to see
what never can be seen

in daylight, face to face,
never embraced, never told
the things we meant to say.
Sometimes they shout, some
times they mumble, sometimes

they simply ignore us, go on
ironing or hammering nails.
Sometimes they carry messages
In runes or stones or bear tracks,
words we can never translate.

We awaken and they're gone
and by the end of breakfast
we forget again, what words
what news, what transformations
they offered there in the dusk of dreams.

My Eyes Delight

It seems so unlikely always
that an ordinary dusty green bush
by the side of a sand road rutted
with dirt bike tracks and raccoon's
sharp handprints, should paint itself

red and gold and orange, dappled,
each leaf a small abstract painting
glowing, this one maroon splashed
golden, this one orange and mahogany,
this one splattered palest almost pink.

Every little road a gallery, every
tree briefly splendid in the wind
that will tear the leaves to shoals
the rain will sodden. But this morning
my eyes are dazzled and it all suffices.

Marge Piercy is the author of 17 poetry collections including Colors Passing Through Us, What Are Big Girls Made Of? and The Art of Blessing the Day: Poems with a Jewish Theme, and this October, The Crooked Inheritance, all from Knopf. She has written sixteen novels, most recently Sex Wars from Morrow/Harper Collins, who published her memoir, Sleeping with Cats. A CD of her political poetry LOUDER, WE CAN’T HEAR YOU YET is out from Leapfrog Press, and co-authored with Ira Wood, So You Want To Write: How to Master the Craft of Fiction and Personal Narrative is now in its 2nd enlarged edition. For more information, please visit her website: www.margepiercy.com