The Guilty Gardener
Weeding is murder, of course.
Why should this green life
be nurtured and this other
pulled up by its roots?
Thinning is murder, of course.
I go down the row of spinach
seedlings pulling every other,
identical, one lives, one withers.
We kill beetles we don’t want,
slugs going about their oozy
business, ants on counters
diligently serving their queen.
Much of nature gets in our
way and we kill it so easily.
.
Possessions Possess Me
Over the course of a very
long life, I’ve accumulated
enough to bury a giant.
Clothes for all the readings
here, abroad, mementoes,
gifts, pillows, objets’d’art.
I went through books,
weeded five full boxes
for the library sale,
kitchen drawers crowded
with obscure tools, five
spatulas, dull corers.
The house is bulging
like an overfed pet.
A strong diet is needed.
I’m suffocating in stuff.
Time to toss, discard
sentiment with trash.
.
An Easy Winter Night
Night of black taffeta rustling:
pines sway, brushing shingles.
The moon is a white dish;
from it stars have spilled out.
A great horned owl hoots
from stripped bough of an oak.
Something is scampering
under tightly rolled leaves
of cold rhododendrons. I pull
the quilt over me, over one cat
under the other, then slide down
a gentle slope into sleep.
© Marge Piercy
Marge Piercy has published 20 poetry collections, 17 novels including Sex Wars. PM Press reissued Vida, Dance the Eagle to Sleep; they brought out short stories The Cost of Lunch, Etc. and My Body, My Life [essays, poems]. She has read at over 575 venues here and abroad. Her most recent book, The Hour of My Death, will be published by Sibylline Press.
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