A year ago today, when we embarked on our traditional monthlong sharing of poems, we had been in quarantine for just a few weeks; as April comes around again, we’re aware of the things that have carried us through the long months of fear, loss, and grief that followed. Poetry—read alone on sleepless nights, shared over communal zooms that bridged distances, declaimed from the inaugural podium—was surely at the top of that list. Take a short poem like the below, from Marge Piercy’s new collection, breathing as it does into a modest space of gratitude and finding it more than ample.
What happiness looks like
Some things are ordinary but perfect: drinking coffee on summer mornings with you as the cats laze about, fed, on you or on me or curled together in the bay window on a sunny pillow. Outside the weeping beech stirs in the wind, leaves hanging down like just washed long tresses. We talk softly of the pending day. This is all I would need of heaven that I don’t believe in, but this I believe.
More on this book and author:
Learn more about On the Way Out, Turn Off the Light by Marge Piercy.
Browse other books by Marge Piercy
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