More Than Enough
The first lily of June opens its red mouth.
All over the sand road where we walk
multiflora rose climbs trees cascading
white or pink blossoms, simple, intense the scene drifting like colored mist.
The arrowhead is spreading its creamy
clumps of flower and the blackberries
are blooming in the thickets. Season of joy for the bee. The green will never again be so green, so purely and lushly
new, grass lifting its wheaty seedheads into the wind. Rich fresh wine of June, we stagger into you smeared with pollen, overcome as the turtle laying her eggs in roadside sand.
Marge Piercy’s latest book of poetry is Colors Passing Through Us (Knopf, 2003); her new novel Sex Wars (Morrow/Harper Collins) will be out in December. Poem copyright 2003 by Marge Piercy and reprinted from The Paterson Literary Review with permission of the author. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry. Send comments to [email protected]