Marge, Round two

Marge with cat.

I saw Marge again after 37 years.

I saw her first in 1977.  I was an 18- year- old virgin,  attending a poetry reading alone at Ithaca College.  Her poems were mostly about sex: exotic, spontaneous sex.

How could you make love to him in an elevator

you say. But it was a freight elevator

I say, it went up very slowly, you could lock

it between floors. Besides that was a decade

ago, I was more adventurist then. Oh, you say,

so you wouldn't fuck me in an elevator, I see.

I like my comfort better now, I say, but you

are my only comfort. Have you an elevator in mind?

The poem that lingered  from that era  was Vol Du Nuit, Night Flight.

Dreams of a twenty-year-old are salty water

and the residual stickiness of berry jam

but they have the power to paralyze

a swimmer out beyond her depth and strength.

Memory’s a minefield.

“One must change a great deal between 18 and 20,” I thought.  I had no disabling memories yet, no entanglements, no  obsessive, half filled diaries… yet.  To be 20 must be to be fully evolved, to have a history of elevator-related memories.

Marge Piercy stood there, in the Ben Light gym, describing a future, our future, in which obsessive memory could disable even the most stable mind.  She stood defiantly behind the podium,  dressed in black, long straight hair flowing  to mid back.  She was exotic as a human could be, and yet she possessed an odd  familiarity.  She was my eccentric Jewish aunt, the one who grows her own vegetables, has a  rambling compost heap,  and sleeps with oddly named cats who become the  subject of her poetry.

You were still a kid in high school

Water under the bridge

Long time ago

You’ve been around the world since

You did alright

You filled your dance card, saw the show

Interesting times

Water under the bridge

Water under the bridge and dynamite it behind you

Memory is a mine field, after all.

That last line does not appear in Didion’s Democracy, but it should,  both women are obsessed with memory’s   disorienting  and destructive power.

I grew into Marge Piercy throughout college.   I could never read her novels, they explode with anger and resentment,  they pulse with misogyny and men put on earth to destroy the world of women.  Yet I always found odd tranquility in her poetry.

To fall in love so late is dangerous.

 Below,


lights are winking out. Cars crawl into driveways 
and fade into the snow. Planes make me think 
of dying suddenly, and loving of dying 
slowly, the heat loss of failure and betrayed
 trust. Yet I cast myself on you, closing
 my eyes as I leap and then opening them wide
 as I land. Love is plunging into darkness toward 
a place that may exist.

These words proved prophetic. Falling in love proved to be the penultimate  leap of faith ( Religion being the ultimate leap of faith)

We saw Marge last night, at a  poetry reading. She no longer strolls, she limps on  arthritic legs  She  still dresses  in black, still peppers her  responses with “fuck”

Cue Jackson Browne, I guess

 Nothing survives

But the way we live our lives.

She doesn’t write as much of sex these days, the spontaneous dangerous affections of our, of her youth. The topic evidently doesn’t interest either  of us any more.  Now she writes of Judaism but, more importantly, she sketches a road map,  a plan to survive one’s remaining years  with dignity and joy.

Live as if you liked yourself, and it may happen: reach out, keep reaching out, keep bringing in. This is how we are going to live for a long time: not always, for every gardener knows that after the digging, after the planting, after the long season of tending and growth, the harvest comes.

At evening’s end, she recited a new poem.  The blessing of the Day

But the discipline of blessings is to taste

each moment, the bitter, the sour, the sweet

and the salty, and be glad for what does not

hurt. The art is in compressing attention

to each little and big blossom of the tree

of life, to let the tongue sing each fruit,

its savor, its aroma and its use.

 I am glad to be freed of constant pain. I want to live my remaining years  reciting  that line   Marge Shared the other night

Be glad for what does not hurt.

 I am leaving two years of pain,  pain so intense that  I wished I were dead. The pain is slowly clearing, and I am honestly grateful for my  ever increasing pain free moments. What is aging but the acceptance of pain?  My medical practice has been aided by my experiencing a 90 year old body blind and weak, and riddled with pain.  I understand know why they beg me to kill them.

You knew me in 1977, you still know me in 2013. Thanks, Marge.