The Hunger Moon

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The Hunger Moon Page 19

by Marge Piercy

The garden like a green

  and bronze goddess loves

  zucchini this year but will

  not give us cucumbers.

  She does as she pleases.

  Purple beans but no yellows.

  Serve me, she whispers,

  maybe I will give you tomatoes,

  or maybe I will hatch into

  thousands of green caterpillars

  maybe I will grow only bindweed,

  joe-pye weed and dandelions.

  All gardeners worship weather

  and luck. We begin in compost

  and end in decay. The life

  of one is the death of the other.

  Beetles eat squash plant. Bird

  eats beetle. Soil eats all.

  Eclipse at the solstice

  New moon and the hottest sun:

  It should be the day of the triumphant

  sun marching like a red elephant

  up the lapis arch of sky.

  The moon is invisible, shy,

  almost wounded. She draws

  the thin short darkness around her

  like a torn dress.

  Then in the fat of the afternoon

  she slides over the sun

  enveloping him. I have

  conquered, she croons,

  brought darkness and put the birds

  to sleep, raised the twilight wind.

  But then his corona shines

  around her and she sees.

  You really are a lion with mane

  of white fire, you beauty. So

  she gives him the day back,

  slowly, and lets him roar.

  The rain as wine

  It is a ripe rain

  coming down in big fat drops

  like grapes dropping on the roof—

  white grapes round as moons.

  It is coming in waves

  whooshing through the trees.

  Silvery, intimate, it softens

  and washes the parched air.

  It falls on my face

  like a blessing.

  It sweetens my body

  rolling down my upstretched arms.

  The rain blesses us

  as it opens the cracked earth

  as it opens us to itself:

  the sweet gush of August rain.

  Taconic at midnight

  At eleven we headed home, north

  on the Taconic Parkway to the Mass Pike,

  a mild late September night with fog

  drifting in great hanks like white Spanish

  moss, wavering in translucent

  banners across the narrow highway,

  diffusing moonlight, deflecting our beams.

  Almost at once we began to see them:

  deer congregated on each side where

  the woods opened, dozens in a clearing,

  bucks in the road, does milling about.

  We drove slower and slower, inching

  past, steering among them who ignored

  our intrusion. They were intent

  on each other, for this gathering

  was a mating mart like a mixer:

  but they were serious, examining

  each other with desperate attention,

  an air of silky sexy tension roiling

  like the fog that sank and lifted

  bedazzling their sleek flanks,

  their shaking antlers. The road

  did not belong. It should have been

  rolled up like a bale of wire and stowed,

  for this was a night of the ancient gods

  when America floated on the turtle’s back

  and all things were still pristine

  as the lucent brown eye of a virgin doe.

  The equinox rush

  The swan heads south in the night sky.

  Overhead, the sharp white triangle

  of Altair, Deneb and Vega prickles.

  At dawn there is a hint of frost,

  only etched on the truck down

  at the foot of the drive.

  A sharp shinned hawk eyes

  chickadees at the feeder, swoops.

  That afternoon over High Head

  I see two more hawks passing

  missile lean, hurrying before

  a wind I cannot feel.

  Everything quickens. Squirrels

  rush to feed. Monarchs among

  the milkweed raggedly zigzag

  toward South America. Too early

  for the final harvest, too early

  to mulch and protect, too soon

  to take off the screens, still

  some sharp corner has been turned.

  I am stirred to finish something.

  A hint of cold frames the moment

  and compresses it. Urgency

  is the drug of the day.

  Find a task and do it, the red

  of the Virginia creeper warns.

  The sunset is a brushfire.

  I am hurrying, I am running hard

  toward I don’t know what,

  but I mean to arrive before dark.

  Seder with comet

  The comet was still hanging in the sky

  that year at Pesach, and of course

  the full moon, as every year.

  After the bulk of the seder, after

  the long rich redolent meal, we all

  went out on the road walking away

  from the house whose lights we had

  dimmed. There on the velvet playing

  field of night we saw the moon rolling

  toward us like a limestone millwheel

  the whole sky pouring to fill our heads

  a little drunk with the sweet wine

  so that the stars sank in with a whisper

  like a havdalah candle doused in wine

  giving a little electric buzz to the brain.

  Then we saw it, the comet like the mane

  of a white lion, something holy to mark

  this one more Passover with all of us

  together, my old commune mates, friends

  from here and the city, children I have known

  since birth, all standing with our faces turned

  up like pale sunflowers to the icy fire.

  Then we went back to the house, drank

  the last cup and sang till we were hoarse.

  The cameo

  My only time in Naples

  the day we went to Pompeii

  street sellers had them: big fine cameos

  just like the one my grandma

  left to me, a brooch. Seeing them

  was finding a footprint in the street:

  her small feet like my mother’s

  had passed here with her great

  sophisticated love. Her rabbi

  father married them on his deathbed.

  They left Russia under a load of straw

  a price on his head, no papers.

  In Naples he sold his gold

  watch to buy them passports

  taking the name Bunin, after

  the writer he admired.

  What will you do in America?

  the anarchist seller asked.

  Make a revolution, he declaimed.

  So he got a good price.

  Off to Ellis Island, where the

  immigration inspector added

  an extra n and let them slip

  in, Grandma secretly pregnant

  under her too big black dress.

  She insisted on mourning her father

  though her husband objected.

  But she kept her long chestnut

  hair against custom, to please

  him, who said such glory should

  never be sacrificed, and any angels

  tempted would have to come through

  him. She did not know yet

  he would be unfaithful, give her

  eleven children to raise in squalor,

  make no revolution but organize

 
unions, be killed by Pinkertons.

  In Naples she danced through exotic

  dangerous streets on his arm, proud

  he could speak Italian and bargain

  not only for passports cheap

  but carved head and shoulders of a fine

  looking woman he said resembled

  her, and she was pleased although

  already she did not believe him.

  Miriam’s cup

  This cup of fresh water on the seder table at Pesach represents the well of Miriam, Moses’ older sister who gave water to the children of Israel through the desert until her death. It compliments the traditional cup of Eliyahu.

  The cup of Eliyahu holds wine;

  the cup of Miriam holds water.

  Wine is more precious

  until you have no water.

  Water that flows in our veins,

  water that is the stuff of life

  for we are made of breath

  and water, vision

  and fact. Eliyahu is

  the extraordinary; Miriam

  brings the daily wonders:

  the joy of a fresh morning

  like a newly prepared table,

  a white linen cloth on which

  nothing has yet spilled.

  The descent into the heavy

  waters of sleep healing us.

  The scent of baking bread,

  roasted chicken, fresh herbs,

  the faces of friends across

  the table. What sustains us

  every morning, every evening,

  the common miracles

  like the taste of cool water.

  Dignity

  Near the end of your life you regard

  me with a gaze clear and lucid

  saying simply, I am, I will not be.

  How foolish to imagine animals

  don’t comprehend death. Old

  cats study it like a recalcitrant mouse.

  You seek out warmth for your bones

  close now to the sleek coat

  that barely wraps them,

  little knobs of spine, the jut

  of hip bones, the skull

  my fingers lightly caress.

  Sometimes in the night you cry:

  a deep piteous banner of gone

  desire and current sorrow,

  the fear that the night is long

  and hungry and you pace

  among its teeth feeling time

  slipping through you cold and

  slick. If I rise and fetch you back

  to bed, you curl against me purring

  able to grasp pleasure by the nape

  even inside pain. Your austere

  dying opens its rose of ash.

  Old cat crying

  The old cat stands on the flagstone

  path through the herb garden,

  crying, crying. She has what

  the vet calls cognitive

  dysfunction, as will we all

  as will we all.

  She is crying for the companion

  who always came to her

  from the time he drank

  her milk, with whom she slept

  four sharp ears from one

  grey cushion of fur.

  He should not have died

  before her. She cries

  for him to come. She

  sniffed his body and knew

  but she has forgotten

  and he does not come.

  I hold her and it is my

  past I mourn, my mother,

  lovers, friends whom

  I shall never again summon

  and the future’s empty

  silent rooms.

  Traveling dream

  I am packing to go to the airport

  but somehow I am never packed.

  I keep remembering more things

  I keep forgetting.

  Secretly the clock is bolting

  forward ten minutes at a click

  instead of one. Each time

  I look away, it jumps.

  Now I remember I have to find

  the cats. I have five cats

  even when I am asleep.

  One is on the bed and I slip

  her into the suitcase.

  One is under the sofa. I

  drag him out. But the tabby

  in the suitcase has vanished.

  Now my tickets have run away.

  Maybe the cat has my tickets.

  I can only find one cat.

  My purse has gone into hiding.

  Now it is time to get packed.

  I take the suitcase down.

  There is a cat in it but no clothes.

  My tickets are floating in the bath

  tub full of water. I dry them.

  One cat is in my purse

  but my wallet has dissolved.

  The tickets are still dripping.

  I look at the clock as it leaps

  forward and see I have missed

  my plane. My bed is gone now.

  There is one cat the size of a sofa.

  Kamasutra for dummies

  Years ago I had a lover who got bored.

  He liked a challenge. I was

  too easily pleased to fluff his ego.

  He bought a manual. We would

  work our way through the positions.

  Work is the operant word. I remember

  his horny toenails and ripe feet

  either side of my eyes and cheeks.

  I remember arching my back

  like a cat, the ache just looming.

  In some positions his prick slipped

  out every other stroke and he would

  curse. It was sensual as those videos

  to flatten your abs or firm your buttocks

  where three young women whose abs

  are flat as floorboards grin like rigor

  mortis as they demonstrate some

  overpriced 800 number device.

  They never sweat. But we did.

  We used chairs. And tables and stools.

  Always the manual was open beside us

  guiding our calisthenics. Spontaneous

  as a concession speech, exciting

  as a lecture on actuarial tables

  he staked my quivering libido through

  its smoking heart. The night he wanted

  to try it standing with me upsidedown

  I left him hanging from the door

  and whoosh, zoomed off like a rabid bat

  to find someone who actually liked sex.

  The first time I tasted you

  The first time I tasted you I thought

  strange: metallic, musty, with salt

  and cinnamon, the sea

  and the kitchen

  safety and danger.

  The second time I tasted you I thought

  known: already known,

  perhaps in an oasis of dream

  in the desert of a hard night

  the dry wind parching me.

  I tasted the fruit of a tree

  that promised not life

  but love, the knowledge

  of being known at last

  down to my gnarly pit.

  What we know and don’t

  of each other goes on

  a voyage not infinite

  but long enough, notching

  years on our bones.

  From your body I eat

  and drink all I will ever

  know of passionate love

  from now till death

  drains the chalice.

  Colors passing through us

  Purple as tulips in May, mauve

  into lush velvet, purple

  as the stain blackberries leave

  on the lips, on the hands,

  the purple of ripe grapes

  sunlit and warm as flesh.

  Every day I will give you a color,

  like a new flower in a bud vase

  on
your desk. Every day

  I will paint you, as women

  color each other with henna

  on hands and on feet.

  Red as henna, as cinnamon,

  as coals after the fire is banked,

  the cardinal in the feeder,

  the roses tumbling on the arbor

  their weight bending the wood

  the red of the syrup I make from their petals.

  Orange as the perfumed fruit

  hanging their globes on the glossy tree,

  orange as pumpkins in the field,

  orange as butterflyweed and the monarchs

  who come to eat it, orange as my

  cat running lithe through the high grass.

  Yellow as a goat’s wise and wicked eyes,

  yellow as a hill of daffodils,

  yellow as dandelions by the highway,

  yellow as butter and egg yolks,

  yellow as a school bus stopping you,

  yellow as a slicker in a downpour.

  Here is my bouquet, here is a sing

  song of all the things you make

  me think of, here is oblique

  praise for the height and depth

  of you and the width too.

  Here is my box of new crayons at your feet.

  Green as mint jelly, green

  as a frog on a lily pad twanging,

  the green of cos lettuce upright

  about to bolt into opulent towers,

  green as Grande Chartreuse in a clear

  glass, green as wine bottles.

  Blue as cornflowers, delphiniums,

  bachelor’s buttons. Blue as Roquefort,

  blue as Saga. Blue as still water.

 

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