Ghosts // Marge Piercy

[iatrogenicmyth.livejournal.com]

The skin falls like leaves
in slow motion, I know it,
is sifted and shifted
by the wind like a dune.
The skin that knew you
seven years back
has sluffed and grown part
of another, some cow,
an oak tree, a crow.

The years wear holes in us,
what looks solid as sheet
metal, one morning the glass
face of the next building
peers through. Theories, rhetoric
fade like a Mail Pouch ad
on an old barn, but the structure
stands firm while the winds
howl through the necessary cracks.

What lives of the woman who
loved you? The fears that twittered
stripping me bare and bony
have risen in a shrill flock
and settled in younger women.
I worry about money
but rarely about my face,
responsibilities hang at my tits
squealing and fat as baby pigs.

Your ghost curls floating in the closed
waters of dream. Your mouth
moves on my throat in the dark,
my hands exactly form your back,
unscalded by the blood of our parting.
I wake trembling in a body you never
touched, while past the curve of the earth
you sleep. Time thickens you.
On the street would I know your face?