Timeless

At ten I remember summers vast as Lake
Superior, stretching to the horizon
like wheat fields in Nebraska where
the aching eye seeks something
on the horizon to attach itself.

I remember periods in school
during which I grew an inch while
leaves opened from tight buds,
lengthened, turned crimson and fell
on the trees of my bored mind.

Every day had twenty-eight hours.
Now a day has only sixteen. Each
skinny hour is leaking minutes.
Even twenty years ago, I had
time enough to loll in now and then.

That was then. Now time runs
its buzzsaw through my brain.
I barely fit inside my days.
They pinch me fore and aft
hardly room to breathe.

I want time out. I want to stop
the whirring of the clock hands
like fans gone mad. My own age
confuses me. When did I stop
being young? Time sneaks

up on you like a bicycle messenger
bearing down fast on your back
about to send you sprawling
your chin on the pavement bleeding
and you’ll never know what hit you.

- Marge Piercy

Bridging

Being together is knowing
even if what we know
is that we cannot really be together
caught in the teeth of the machinery
of the wrong moments of our lives.

A clear umblicus
goes out invisibly between,
thread we spin fluid and finer than hair
but strong enough to hang a bridge on.

That bridge will be there
a blacklight rainbow arching
out of your skull
whenever you need
whenever you can open your
eyes and want
to walk upon it.

Nobody can live on a bridge
or plant potatoes
but it is fine for comings and goings,
meetings, partings and long views
and a real connection to someplace else
where you may
in the crazy weathers of struggle
now and again want to be.

- Marge Piercy